› added 9 years ago

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TIL Steve Crohn was one of the first studied cases of HIV immunity. His Immunity was due to a mutation in the CCR5 delta-5 receptor of CD4-t*cells, this prevented the virus from “entering” the immune cell. He committed suicide at the age of 66 after most of his friends died from the disease.

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Ny48 TIL that in 1987 the IRS required tax payers to list the SSNs of child they claimed as a dependent. As a result 7 million children vanished from tax returns.
OomLL TIL Natives in Canada had a traditional gift giving holiday nearly identical to Christmas called Potlatch until it was outlawed for being unchristian, hundreds of natives were sent to prison for continuing to celebrate it from 1921 until the law was finally repealed in the 1950s.
5YRkQ TIL Robert Pattinson was expelled from school when he was 12 for shoplifting explicit magazines and selling them later to his male classmates
54Qp TIL that Buzz Aldrin celebrated communion on the moon and that NASA kept it a secret
4NPg TIL Carl Sagan once said “An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.”