› added 8 years ago

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TIL Horace Wells, man who pioneered the use of laughing gas in dentistry, became so deranged after experimenting with chloroform that he poured sulfuric acid on 2 prostitutes. He committed suicide shortly after realizing what he had done.

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XEOEk TIL that China has only one time zone – despite spanning 5 geographical ones
WXmY TIL Edgar Allen Poe’s novel “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” (1838) had an eerily coincidence with an incident 46 years after it was published, a yacht sank in real life and 3 of the 4 survivors also decided to eat the cabin boy…named Richard Parker.
7rpLr TIL when writing a Torah scroll, "an error of a single letter, ornamentation, or symbol of the 304,805 stylized letters that make up the Hebrew Torah text renders it unfit to use"
b0Va TIL Pregnant women are affected by morning sickness to protect the unborn fetus in its most vulnerable stage, when organs first start developing. It clears her system (via vomit) of substances that typically carry microbes or toxins.
x6k41 TIL about the Davy Crockett - a tripod mounted gun developed by the US during the Cold War. It fired a tactical nuclear warhead with a range of up to 4 miles and a yield that caused fatal radiation within a radius of a quarter of mile