› added 12 years ago

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TIL the US military would play Enter Sandman for hours on end to aid in the interrogation and torture of prisoners. Asked about this, Metallica’s James Hetfield responded “We’ve been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?”

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via reddit.com

0dG7M TIL Nigeria has Over 250 Ethnic groups and 500 languages.
V8W4 TIL 1 in 10 inhabitants on the island of Pingelap is color blind due to a ‘population bottleneck’ in 1775 after a catastrophic typhoon swept through the remote island leaving only 20 survivors. One of the survivors was King Nanmwarki Mwanenihsed, patient 0 with the rare Achromatopsia gene.
QJY6e TIL that Henry VIII was sometimes called "Old Coppernose." He issued debased coins to fund wars and one coin was mostly copper with a thin layer of silver on top. The coin had a portrait of Henry and his projecting nose caused the silver to wear off first exposing the copper underneath.
4Xrx6 TIL Not only were the Ninja Turtles named after Renaissance painters, but there was a Renaissance painter, Giovanni di ser Giovanni Guidi, who was nicknamed "The Splinter." (Fixed from my previous post)
wRQ6 TIL humans hadn’t detected any planets outside of our solar system until 1991, just 26 years ago. Before then, we had no evidence that planets existed around any other star in the universe.