› added 4 years ago

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TIL "As a boy of five, John Brown witnessed a slave his own age being beaten with a fire shovel. He vowed to become a foe of slavery." As an abolitionist, he said "These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!" He was ultimately hanged as a traitor for acts which spurred the Civil War.

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JYb04 TIL That Broadway Street was called the Wickquasgeck trail in the Native American era.
LQyZm TIL that a flight delay, weather, and foot perspiration prevented Richard Reid (the infamous Shoe Bomber) from successfully detonating his high-tops in flight.
4Yga TIL spiders can’t chew or swallow, so they inject poison into their prey which turns the insides of insect to a watery goop and spider just suck it up.
xVoE1 TIL that Richard Karn, the actor who played Al on Home Improvement, heard about the role after receiving a traffic citation, going to traffic school and sitting beside an agent who told him about a casting session for the show.
XEp5R TIL in 1970 film critic Roger Ebert wrote the screenplay for ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’. One review described it as “a treat for the emotionally retarded, sexually inadequate and dimwitted. It is a grievously sick melange of hypermammalian girls, obvious double-entendres and sadistic violence”