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TIL it's very likely that military-style flails never existed. They are never described in medieval literature or chronicles. The original inventors were not weaponsmiths but illustrators. The smiths who made them from the 16th Century onward were just copying an idea rather than a thing.

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GYNdj TIL Rosemary Kennedy was developmentally disabled and lashed out regularly. She was given a lobotomy and asked to sing 'God Bless America'. They continued cutting away deeper into her brain until her singing became incoherent, then stopped.
0wXrR TIL about the flower that smells like a corpse. Titan Arum is one of the largest (typically 6 - 8 feet tall) and rarest flowers in the world, once bloomed it emits a strong odor similar to a rotting corpse to attract pollinators.
VM4DQ TIL Wolf Brand Chili was founded in 1921, and it's marketing campaign aincluded Model T Ford trucks with cabs shaped like chili cans and painted to resemble the Wolf Brand label as well as a live wolf caged in the back of each truck.
4k0gg TIL that the Association of German National Jews was a group of Jewish Germans who supported Hitler in the early 1930s hoping for assimilation, but its members were later persecuted and sent to concentration camps.
Br76L TIL that in 2012, a computer error caused all the fireworks in the San Diego's Fourth of July Celebration to go off at once, instead of over 18 minutes