› added 1 year ago

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TIL Kennedy's book, Profiles In Courage, was extremely sympathetic to the Deep South and the Lost Cause myth. He portrayed the South as the victims of the Civil War and Reconstruction while Northerners were portrayed as corrupt officials who exploited and ravaged the South.

R78O9 TIL "tsundoku" is a Japanese term that refers to the fact of buying books and never reading them.
LpVp TIL that a book attributed to Penelope Ashe was actually written by a group of 24 journalists. It was designed to be deliberately terrible with a lot of sex, to illustrate the point that American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. The book became a bestseller in 1969.
nWeNr TIL that a group of Geoducks, the largest burrowing clam in the world, is called a "bag". The name Geoduck was derived from an indigenous word meaning "genitals", or a phrase meaning "dig deep", or perhaps both, as a double-entendre. So a group of Geoducks is literally a "bag of dicks"
vPgaB TIL that Captain Cook's famous exploration ship HMS Endeavour was later purchased by a company and renamed Lord Sandwich, but since another ship already had that name, it had to be renamed to Lord Sandwich 2, which later became a prison ship for England during the American Revolution.
MewVb TIL about the idea of the Good Country Index: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away, relative to its size. Using a wide range of data from the U.N. and other international organizations. This has been active since 2014