› added 11 months ago

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TIL only 20% of Hong Kongers support independence

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epda5 TIL a Challenger space shuttle engineer, Allan McDonald, raised safety concerns against the wishes of his employer & NASA. He was ignored; a fatal accident resulted. When McDonald spoke out, he was demoted by his company. Congress stepped in to help him. He later taught ethical decision making.
wL9dM TIL In 1997, an American co., RiceTec obtained a patent for a strain of rice never historically grown in America — “Basmati”. They achieved this by crossbreeding India’s native plant with a US long rice variety & then claimed exclusive rights over any basmati hybrid grown in the western hemisphere.
grBl9 TIL the T4 Program was a Nazi German euthanasia program that forcibly killed the physically or mentally disabled, the emotionally distraught, elderly people and the incurably ill. The death toll may have reached 200,000 or more
VMLe8 TIL: That in 2012 antifreeze manufacturers agreed to add bittering agents to antifreeze, in order to prevent children and pets from consuming it.
JYL8m TIL of the Kaningara tribe of Papua New Guinea, who used to use bamboo knives to cut the flesh of boys and young men, to fill them with the power of the crocodile spirit.