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TIL the lyrics to the song "Winter Wonderland" were written by Richard Bernhard Smith while he was hospitalized for tuberculosis treatment. He would die of the disease a year after the song was first recorded.

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ZZ5R TIL Tootsie Roll has no idea where the rumor about free suckers for wrappers with indians/stars on them came from, and simply returns redemption letters with a let down note
nAm9 Today I learned that in 2013 we dropped thousands of parachuting dead mice packed with painkillers onto snakes in Guam.
gMMm9 TIL that due to being in the same room a psychiatrist's mental health patients became recommended friends to eachother on Facebook.
xVebw TIL "Motivated Reasoning" is why you can't change someone's mind on the Internet. Techniques include identity-protective cognition (being dismissive of uncomfortable ideas) biased assimilation (only remembering supporting ideas) and biased information search (staying in a bubble).
8eMWa TIL The US attempted to engineer longer monsoon seasons in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War in order to 'ruin roads, jam rivers, and extend the amount of time swathes of Vietnam weren’t traversable.' After 5 years and millions of dollars spent, it's not clear if it accomplished anything.