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TIL about galalith, a synthetic plastic made by the interaction of casein (found in milk) and formaldehyde invented in the 1920s to replace materials such as ivory or horn

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p861b TIL in Korean, the word 동무 (同務/tongmu) was originally used to mean "friend" across the whole of Korea. After the North began to use it as a translation of the comrade, the word has fallen out of use in the south. instead, the south started to use 친구 (親舊/chingu) to mean friend
9YaZM TIL someone on the set of titanic spiked the seafood chowder with PCP and got dozens of cast and crew members high including director James Cameron
mWxY TIL the movie, The Constant Gardner, is inspired by a real life event involving Pfizer testing Trovafloxacin, an untested and unproven antibiotic, on 200 children in Africa without their informed consent which led to 6 deaths and multiple cases of blindness, brain damage, and deafness.
V9x4 TIL that Alan Turing, the man who broke the enigma code during WWII, is estimated to have shortened the war by over two years, and to have saved over 14 million lives. He was later charged for his homosexuality and was forced to undergo chemical castration.
BxWK TIL an isolated tribe in Papua New Guinea meets a white man for the first time in 1976 and thinks the white man is covered in dirt/sand.