› added 11 years ago

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TIL the historian Iris Chang, whose book “The Rape of Nanking” reached the New York Times Best Seller list when she was only 29 years old, was deep into research for her fourth book about the Bataan Death March, had a break with reality, and killed herself

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D1Xrr TIL that Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book was written for St. Nicholas Magazine, a publication for children edited by Mary Mapes Dodge. Dodge, author of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, asked Kipling to contribute something and although he'd never written for children before, he said he'd try.
b6Oe4 TIL that tobacco smoke enemas were so accepted as a resuccitation treatment for drowning in 1700's Europe that emergency smoke enema kits were placed next to the River Thames in London. Doubts about the utility might also be the source of the expression about "blowing smoke up your ass."
yV7nV TIL Chris Rock did a comedy sketch "revealing" OJ Simpson's hypothetical confession a decade before the novel "If I Did It".
VO84 TIL in September, 2014, GlaxoSmithKline accidentally dumped 45 litres of concentrated live polio virus solution into the Lasne river in Belgium.
JYbwl TIL: Since its unveiling, the President of the United States has almost always sent a funeral wreath to be laid at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery every Memorial Day.