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TIL Red Summer: January 1 and September 14, 1919, white mobs lynched at least 43 African Americans, with 16 hanged and others shot; while another 8 men were burned at the stake.

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b9By9 TIL songwriter James Blunt was once an army officer. He was in Kosovo in 1999 when the Russians took over Pristina airport. The NATO commander order Blunt's unit to attack and Blunt's commander refused saying we're "not going to start the Third World War."
Ypr7d TIL orchids are named after the greek word for testes (orchis) due to the shape of their tubers
90L6 TIL that Matthew Broderick turned down the role of Walter White from Breaking Bad
LNkV TIL Rube Goldberg never built a Rube Goldberg Machine. He was a cartoonist and only drew them out.
VBX4B TIL that in WWI, there were bicycle ambulances, made of two, three, or four bicycles with an attached stretcher. Two-bicycle ambulances were developed as early as the 1890s.