› added 6 months ago

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TIL that Boston Corbett (soldier who killed John Booth) castrated himself with a pair of scissors to avoid temptation upon seeing prostitutes

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via reddit.com

XE40j TIL that German was the most-studied foreign language in the U.S. in the years before and even during World War I. About a quarter of high schoolers studied it right before the U.S. entered the war, but only about 1% of high schools still taught it after the war.
1aLQV TIL that in 2019 a ranking of the 20 drunkest cities in the United States listed the top four as all being from Wisconsin, which had 12 cities listed overall.
7aBZ TIL… Dr. Pepper was not named after the creator but after the friend of the inventor. Also Dr. Pepper predates coke by one whole year!
nenB7 TIL there is an ant megacolony that spans Japan, Europe, and the United States
N71d8 TIL that World War II WASP pilot Katherine Dussaq married the inventor of the polygraph machine and was herself a renowned forensics expert who ran an all-women detective agency. Katherine died in a service-related crash in November of 1944, only weeks away from the disbanding of the WASP.