› added 6 years ago

469

TIL that Chris Langan, "the smartest man in America" with an IQ reportedly between 190 and 210, began weight training at the age of twelve after repeatedly being physically beaten by his stepfather and stopped the abuse himself at the age of fourteen by throwing him out of the house.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mx9LO TIL Hattie McDaniel was the first black person to win an Oscar for Gone with the Win, however she was unable to attend the premier in Atlanta at a whites-only theater, sat at a segregated table on the side of the room at the Oscars and was not buried in the Hollywood Cemetery despite her final wish.
6E0gW TIL that the first large scale human trial for the birth control pill was conducted on Puerto Rican women in the 1950s. These women were unknowingly participating in the clinical trial and deaths of participants were not investigated.
RZ9l TIL After Hurricane Sandy, American Red Cross responded to NY Attorney General’s public request for information by hiring lawyers and arguing that some information about the response was a “trade secret” and “competitive harm” from competitors mimicking their model
DeNj TIL: Before the US Post Master General specifically made it illegal, two children were successfully ‘mailed’ via the postal service in 1913.
ZWPo TIL Cliché is an onomatopoeia of the noise made by a printing press when something is printed over and over again, or in other words “Stereotyped”