› added 5 years ago

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TIL Thomas Jefferson for many years "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves” named Sally Hemings.

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PDWZ TIL North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights, stolen by a Union soldier in 1865, was recovered by an FBI sting operation in 2003
wo5bY TIL The first man to report a rogue wave was Jules Dumont d'Urville in 1826, d'Urville was then publicly ridiculed because such a wave was believed impossible. A rogue wave was not measured until 1995 and the lack of earlier reporting is likely due to few wooden ships surving the encounter.
gBl4 TIL 17-year-old Harvard student, Ted Kaczynski, was one of 22 subjects in the CIA-sponsored Project MKUltra. It focused on measuring people’s reactions under extreme stress. Assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were the vehicle used to cause high levels of stress and distress.
oRBmE TIL in 1996 a woman going through heroin withdrawal crushed up a black widow spider and injected it
b9arZ TIL Ben Franklin wrote an essay begging scientists to invent farts that smell like perfume.