› added 12 years ago

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TIL that Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis was an early pioneer of washing your hands during surgery but this concept conflicted with the established scientific/medical opinions of the time and he was committed to an asylum.

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W7XOL TIL about the "Green Card Lottery" the first commercial computer spam campaign (Via Usenet) which was started by the now disbarred layer Laurence Canter and his wife in 1994.
W7DX9 TIL that Uzbekistan has the 6th largest Korean population outside of Korea (~174,000), mainly due to mass deportations of ethnic Koreans (among others) in the USSR to Central Asia in the 1930s (during which up to 25% died).
7r7RM TIL that Leopold Amery, Winston Churchill's own Secretary of State for India, wrote in his private diaries, "on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane" and that he didn't "see much difference between [Churchill's] outlook and Hitler's."
9YvRB TIL when he was a child, Stephen King witnessed one of his friends being killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving to go play with the boy, King returned, speechless and in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death.
Z8aAQ TIL of US Army nurse Ruby Bradley. Captured during WWII, she was nicknamed the "Angel in Fatigues", delivering 13 babies and smuggling food to help starving children. During the Korean War, she refused to leave her hospital until everyone has left, despite surrounded by 100,000 enemy soldiers.