› added 5 years ago

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TIL tug-of-war used to be an Olympic sport. In the 1912 Olympics in Sweden, the host nation took gold, Great Britain took silver, and no one won bronze because only two teams showed up.

5N19 TIL Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton invented the dog whistle, meteorology, forensic fingerprinting and mathematical correlation. He also suggested that principles of animal breeding could be applied to humans, coined the word ‘eugenics’, and came up with the 'nature vs nurture’ idea.
d8ao9 TIL despite his bad reputation, Emperor Nero was adored by the common people and his policies consistently favored the poor. He lowered taxes, ensured their legal aid and promoted art and culture instead of violent sports. The historians that vilified him were rich senators, his political enemies
KYyY6 TIL that when his production company could not afford a major star for his first western, director Sergio Leone hired a man with no name at the time in Hollywood and commented about him that he “had two expressions: with hat and no hat“ - Clint Eastwood.
Lk0WP TIL that the street in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest was named in honor of Liviu Librescu, Romanian–American scientist and engineer. A prominent academic in addition to being a survivor of the Holocaust, he is renown for his heroism during the 2007 Virginia Tech Shooting.
b9610 The founder and first leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, created the country's policy of juche or "self-reliance," which cut off North Korea economically and diplomatically from the rest of the world, even in times of great need, such as famines.