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TIL that Immanuel Kant promoted "scientific" racism, giving a hierarchy of four races: white Europeans "always advance to perfection", yellow Asians "can never reach the level of abstract concepts", black Africans "can be educated but only as servants", and red Amerindians "cannot be educated"

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a8vNL TIL that Carlo Urbani, an Italian Microbiologist, was the first to identify SARS-COV-1 in Vietnam and report it to the WHO as a dangerous new pathogen. Urbani himself died of SARS himself shortly after, having triggered a rapid response to a potential pandemic, and saving many lives.
9YWlr TIL - That Parkinson's Law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. Further, he defined a "coefficient of inefficiency" with the number of members as the main determining variable
YQXr TIL that the US Secret Service has an SUV with anti-IED jammers and anti-missile radar in the presidential motorcade. It is believed that if a rocket is detected, infrared smoke grenades are detonated while the president’s driver activates a thermal-imaging driving system to escape.
1aEGP TIL The history of the Cantonese, or Yue, language is more than 2,000 years old, making it older than Mandarin, the official language of China, which only has 700 to 800 years of history
B4Mk TIL Steve Jobs used a loophole in the medical registration system to get his non-essential liver transplant before 16,000 other people who were already on the list for years.