› added 11 months ago

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TIL Between 1973 and 1980, about 1000 cases of bismuth-related neurotoxicity were reported in France, resulting in a ban on bismuth compounds.

Read more bmcneurol.biomedcentral.com

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4k9yN TIL the term “third world” was originally a label worn as a sense of pride for countries that didn't fall into either the pro-capitalism or pro-communism camp.
EOxW TIL Semantic Satiation is the psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then processes the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.
yQj9v TIL alphabetical order was introduced in the 3rd century BC by Zenodotus, who also happened to be the first librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria.
69MoJ TIL Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet who had multiple personalities and different biographies, for example, he would sometimes claim to be a man called Ricardo Reis born in the city of Porto (while the real Pessoa was born in Lisbon).
bOy7 TIL that in Japan, many dildos are created to resemble animals or cartoon characters, such as Hello Kitty, so that they may be sold as toys, thus avoiding obscenity laws.