› added 10 years ago

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TIL after working on the US bid for the 1986 World Cup, Henry Kissinger was quoted as saying “The politics of FIFA, they make me nostalgic for the Middle East”.

JYAQ8 TIL In Denmark it is forbidden to have tattoos done on the face and hands, because Frederik 9. king from 1947-72, joined a maritime education and made a living as a sailor. In that time he got a lot of tattoos. The parliament hoped by passing the ban to prevent the king from having visible tattoos.
PYvje TIL that clozapine (an antipsychotic drug) can cause constipation so severe that you vomit fecal material. A man is reported of dying from pneumonia that developed after aspirating such vomitus.
NY58 TIL that in 1893 geologist and explorer Major John Wesley Powell told the Los Angeles International Irrigation Congress, “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.” He was booed out of the hall.
laO5 TIL Thomas Midgley who invented Ethyl, the lead-based additive to gasoline, also invented chlorofluorocarbons, which just about destroyed the ozone layer. He got polio, invented a wire-and-pulley system to get himself out of bed, and then ended up being strangled by it.
rNVm0 TIL that so many ships were abandoned by prospectors during the 1849 Gold Rush in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Cove that it was called a "forest of masts." Some ships became bars, hotels, and brothels—where much of the gold was spent. Today, the ships lie beneath 50-story buildings.