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TIL George Washington prevented a military coup over unpaid back wages by putting on a pair of glasses to read a letter from Congress, explaining he was "almost blind in the service of my country.” Moved to tears, his officers compromised.

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yQkYe TIL the Greeks often described foreign languages as sounding like "bar bar bar." Anyone who spoke a foreign language was called a Barbarian.
rRWVw TIL The vanilla orchid blooms for one day in a year and the flower is only fertile for 8-12 hours. Each flower must be pollinated by hand within that 12-hour window. Unsurprisingly vanilla is nearly as expensive as silver
5Ylw9 TIL that as many as 1 million Vietnamese people are disabled or have health problems as a result of U.S. use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Nearly 20 million gallons of various herbicides and defoliants were sprayed over Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 by the U.S. military.
0dpKA TILearned about the "Powder of sympathy", a form of sympathetic medicine in 17th century Europe whereby a remedy was applied to the weapon that had caused a wound with the aim of healing the injury it had made.
1aK48 TIL Surgical Gloves Were Invented Because a Doctor had the Hots for his Nurse