› added 6 years ago

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TIL that President William McKinley (who was assassinated) often wore a trademark good luck charm. It was a red carnation worn on his lapel. While meeting with the public a 12 year old girl asked him for the flower. He gave it to her and moments later was shot.

m1E1v TIL Tom Morello (guitarist for Rage Against the Machine) attended Harvard for college, where he won the Ivy League Battle of the Bands with Carolyn Bertozzi, a 2022 Nobel Prize laureate, on keyboards
grY5X TIL that in January 1917, German Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico to try and persuade Mexico to attack the US. The British intercepted and decoded it, then forwarded to the US. That telegram was a big factor in the US entering World War I.
R7QJa TIL a lot of the greek tragedies of the classical period are "spin offs" or new takes on stories from the works of Homer. In Euripides' "Helen", Helen of Troy never really went to Troy, but unbeknownst to the Achaeans, she was in Egypt the whole time, and the trojan war was completely pointless
kO8Xg TIL that besides Chernobyl and Fukushima, there was a Soviet nuclear disaster that happened on 1957. The Kyshtym Disaster. Death toll is estimated to be at 50 to more than 8,000. The CIA knew about it but covered it up to prevent panic affecting their own nuclear plants.
69gll TIL about empty nose syndrome (ENS) a disorder that sometimes occurs after corrective surgery for a deviated septum that makes its sufferers feel like they are constantly drowning and can often drive them to suicide