› added 12 years ago

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TIL when US President McKinley was shot twice in the stomach, he voiced only two concerns - that his aides break the news to his wife gently and to call off the mob that had set upon his assassin. He died 8 days later on September 14th, 1901.

R7nb9 TIL that painter Claude Monet had the lens of his eyes removed after developing cataracts. After the surgery, he started painting lilies that he had previously painted white before, as blue, leading to the idea that he could have been perceiving UV light, which most normal humans cannot.
KYX76 TIL that in 1951, the future President of Botswana (then a member of the Botswanan Royal Family) and his wife were exiled to the UK for 5 years, as the South African government disapproved of their interracial marriage and the UK did not want to imperil their access to cheap resources in SA.
EGJX TIL that Romans sometimes roasted chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a goose stuffed inside a pig stuffed inside a cow
j6XZj TIL that Philip Gale was a child prodigy who killed himself at age 19 by jumping from a classroom window. Before he did it, he wrote on the blackboard Newton's equation for how an object accelerates as it falls, along with a sketch of a stick figure tossing a chair. He signed it, " Phil was here. "
NXvjE TIL that a Pokemon card with the move “Birthday Surprise”, a move that would deal more damage if it was the day your birthday, was banned from competitive play in order to stop people from faking their date of birth to cheat.