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TIL John Wilkes Booth was surprised to find little public sympathy after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Formerly anti-Lincoln newspapers condemned the act and while some Southerns were happy Lincoln was dead others feared it would spur retribution upon the already defeated Confederate states.

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QJ0Q9 TIL about the '91 Louisiana governor's race, which pitted corrupt Democrat Edwin Edwards against former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. Voters were urged to "vote for the lizard, not the wizard." Duke lost by only 11% despite near-total denouncement by the Republican party, including President Bush.
MnpB TIL One of the widely used dispersants used to clean up the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Corexit, is highly poisonous to biological species, including humans. The health effects are quite adverse.
78agp TIL a Berlin-based artist tricked Google Maps into thinking that a completely empty street was bursting with traffic by filling a wagon with 99 smartphones, opening Maps navigation on all of them, and then slowly pulling the wagon along Berlin streets.
6EVGY TIL When Sacha Baron Cohen was being threatened by the Kazakhstan government with legal action, he replied as his character, Borat: "I'd like to state that I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew."
kO5W4 TIL that the name, Plastic Surgery, has nothing to do with the material and comes from the Greek word plastike (πλαστική) which means the art of modelling.