› added 12 years ago

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TIL that lobsters are functionally immortal. They show no measurable signs of aging (no loss of appetite, no change in metabolism, no loss of reproductive urge or ability, no decline in strength or health), and seem to only die from external causes.

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b6RY7 TIL: During Prohibition in the US, it was illegal to buy or sell alcohol, but it was not illegal to drink it. Some wealthy people bought out entire liquor stores before it passed to ensure they still had alcohol to drink.
DQQMP TIL that Keye Luke (Number One Son, Blind Master Po from Kung Fu, and the old shopkeeper from Gremlins) was a successful artist before he was an actor. He painted murals for Grauman’s Chinese Theater, illustrated books and sheet music, and designed movie posters, including one for King Kong.
LkBLr TIL Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His most famous work was a six volume memoir about WW2, but he also wrote a science fiction alternate history story about the US Civil War.
pY85e TIL, the reason for many serial Killers "having three names", such as John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, Lee Harvey Oswald, is actually a convention of media reporting, under the assumption that by using the middle name people with the same first and last name will not be misidentified as the killer.
9YXkm TIL: The U.S. government during the Prohibition Era mandated that industrial alcohols receive toxic additives, effectively poisoning supplies of bootleg liquor. At least ten thousand people are estimated to have died due to bootleg alcohol poisoning.