› added 4 years ago

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TIL some maritime history and the word “quarantine” originates from the Venetian dialect form of the Italian ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning “forty days”.

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XEea6 TIL Sting, the wrestler, owns the rights to the name "Sting". Sting, the musician, reportedly pays the wrestler $1 per year to use the name.
m1r5y TIL Stephen Hawking left behind £16.3 Million (around $20 Million) in his last will and testament, and £10 Thousand to his long-time personal assistant. Hawkings Archive and his personal office contents passed into public ownership using methods that saved his estate £4.2 Million of inheritance tax
wp17 TIL New York tried to outlaw leaded gasoline back in the early 1920’s - before it was commonplace. However, the Federal Government sided with Big Oil, overruling the state’s decision.
LkRRd TIL that Ivy League schools + sister schools used to take nude photos of all incoming freshmen, supposedly to gauge the severity of scoliosis and etc. The two lead psychologists then tried to use the data to justify their theories on body type and social hierarchy.
M7krb TIL that the earliest generation with a formal name ("Arthurian Generation") is, coincidentally, Generation A by the informal lettered system. The only ones that DON'T from there are Q (often lumped in with P), X (the first to even get a letter), Z (names proposed but disputed), and α (too recent).