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TIL that in mid-18th century France, eating potatoes was considered cruel and unusual punishment: potatoes were thought of as feed for livestock, and they were believed to cause leprosy in humans. The fear was so widespread that the French passed a law banning them in 1748.

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LQM6d Today I learned the Panhellenic Games is the collective term for four separate sports festivals held in ancient Greece. The four Games were the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean and the Isthmian games.
ZpgAa TIL: In 2008 a man beheaded and ate a man’s eyes on a greyhound bus in Canada and was found not guilty of murder and is now roaming free
8aLvP TIL Jimmy Neutron never got cancelled. DNA Productions decided to make The Ant Bully, which did so poor in the box office it actually sent the whole company under in 2006.
m05Y TIL 92 years ago today started the largest uprising in U.S. history since the Civil War, when over 10,000 armed coal miners attempted to take down lawmakers in an attempt to unionize West Virginian mine workers. The U.S. Army intervened, and the workers lost.
DaXp TIL a previously owned black slave was asked to calculate the number of seconds in 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours in order to prove equality in intelligence between blacks and whites. Not only did he accomplish the feat in 1.5 minutes, but he included the leap years in his calculations.