› added 4 years ago

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TIL that the word "amok", as in "to run amok", is a reference to a Malay word meaning "to make a furious or desperate charge." It entered English usage after Europeah visitors to Southeast Asia reported it a as a psychiatric disorder (and it is still listed as one in the DSM IV).

epdZE TIL about the 4x100m universal relay. It features 4 athletes with 4 different disabilities. Each team must be mixed, with 2 women and 2 men. The relay is started by a visually impaired athlete, followed by an amputee sprinter. In third place is a person with cerebral palsy, then a wheelchair athlete
l78D5 TIL: Patrick Stewart thought he would be fired from Star Trek: The Next Generation and didn’t unpack his bags for 6 weeks
pDQG TIL Paul McCartney dreamed the melody of “Yesterday” one night and immediately wrote the music the next morning. He then looked around for a month to find out whether or not he plagiarized it from someone else.
yQDlw TIL there’s a dating app in Iceland that "helps prevent accidental incest". Due to the small population of 320,000 it is a real risk bumping into a previously unknown cousin. The app lets users "bump" phones and emits a warning alarm if they are closely related.
rNRNe TIL there were several different types of Mammoths. The most known variety, the Wooly Mammoth, was one of the smaller kinds, and were comparable in size to modern elephants, At one time there were Mammoths living from North Africa, across all of Eurasia, and into Central America.