› added 12 years ago

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TIL: William Ellison (1790 – 1861), a freed slave, became a wealthy plantation owner, supported the Confederate States of America and held 60 of his own slaves

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7rk7b TIL Alexander Graham Bell was a eugenicist and despite being married to a deaf woman, tried to prevent the use of ASL, in favor of Oralism, and tried to prevent the deaf from marrying each other.
em9L TIL according to Carl Sagan, NASA gave cyanide pills to astronauts to commit suicide in case something went wrong.
5VVYn TIL that rodents like rats and squirrels can't vomit, one of the few mammals lacking that trait
DQnkg Today I Learned that even though chilies and peppers aren't related, chilies are often called "chili peppers" because of an historical error caused by Christopher Columbus mistakenly linking the "spiciness" and "heat" of native Latin American chilies to Indian pepper.
P18Be TIL In 1969 Colorado tried fracking with a nuclear bomb - it worked, but the oil and gas are too irradiated to be used even today