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TIL: One of the founding fathers, Benjamin Rush, believed that blacks were actually white underneath, but they were stricken with a non-contagious disease which darkened their skin colour. However, he believed with proper treatment, blacks could be cured and become white.

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0wgoR TIL the longest-running experiment is the pitch drop experiment. A funnel holding a sample of tar pitch sealed in a glass jar shows how some substances that appear solid are actually liquid. It takes 10 years for a single drop to form. The best known version of the experiment was started in 1927.
4keGo TIL that the mitochondria in our cells, which generate energy, are ancient bacteria that had a symbiotic relationship with other single cell organisms and developed around 1.5 billion years ago
ZpaWa TIL Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of the French, was a made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire her aid to the British during the First World War. Eugénie de Montijo donated her yacht to the war effort and funded hospitals in France.
YpvEd TIL Balto, the Alaskan sled dog, was sold into the L.A. Vaudeville circuit after his 1925 serum run. A Cleveland businessman saved him from his showbiz squalor and Balto retired at the Cleveland Zoo. Since his death, was taxidermied and is on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
wLDNP TIL that the Mayan people constructed the temples in a way that a handclap at the base of the temple produces an echo that sounds like the call of the sacred Quetzal bird. For them the bird was a messenger of the gods.