› added 3 months ago

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TIL that scientists have developed a way of testing for Aphantasia (the inability to visualise things in your mind). The test involves asking participants to envision a bright light and checking for pupil dilation. If their pupils don't dilate, they have Aphantasia.

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8LPX TIL Blackbeard was remarkably judicious in his use of force. In dozens of eyewitness accounts, there is not a single instance in which he killed anyone prior to his final, fatal battle with the Royal Navy. “I haven’t seen a single piece of evidence that Blackbeard ever used violence against anyone.”
PYZ4n TIL How a Worm Gave the South a Bad Name, between 1865 and 1910, 40 percent of the South's population suffered from hookworms. Thousands of worms could live in a person at one time. These parasites and the constant bloodsucking made an infected person pale, tired and slow, leading to stunted growth.
0wRdA TIL Cher hated the song “If I Could Turn Back Time” and only recorded it because songwriter Diane Warren held down her leg and said “You have to record it!” It was released as a single and marked a comeback moment for Cher in 1989.
wo8J8 TIL that the reason that "The Office, An American Workplace" (the in-world documentary in The Office TV series) began filming was to document the fallout from the suicide of a Dunder Mifflin employee named Tom Peets (mentioned briefly in S2 E8). The focus was later changed to the Scranton branch.
1aad4 TIL the first US naval ship to have electric lighting was the USS Trenton (commissioned, 1877). The lights were installed in 1883