› added 9 years ago

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TIL German was the second largest spoken language in the U.S. before it was forcibly oppressed during the First World War. Americans with German ancestry, are still the single largest ethnic group in the U.S.

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KOlGa TIL that the skin of arctic tribes people are dark because they get all their vitamin D from fish instead of sunlight. Their skin does not need to lighten to try and get more sun for vitamin D production.
ANgdn TIL not only was Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the WTC on 9/11, but with his camcorder he captured everything from the 2nd plane hitting to both towers collapsing. While he has released screenshots, he has declined to publish the full tape, feeling it was too intimate to be tastefully shown to the public.
aVZZ TIL Dr. Bernice Eddy warned the NIH that the polio vaccines they were about to release contained live polio virus. They ignored her and released the vaccine anyway, and as a result 40,000 children developed polio. The NIH director who dismissed Dr. Eddy then resigned.
wLl4W TIL During the Civil War the Union Army made a parody of the Confederate's de facto anthem "Dixie"
LkZ10 TIL cryptanalyst Elizebeth Friedman broke 4,000 codes during WWII and brought down a Nazi spy ring by cracking an early version of the Enigma machine with pen and paper