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TIL “Pulling Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps” originally meant attempting something ludicrous or impossible

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5jBR TIL A 45 year old Bosnian man named Amir Vehabovic faked his death back in 2007 because he wanted to see who would attend his funeral. Only his mother attended. After this debacle, he wrote dozens of angry letters to his so-called friends and what he thought of their friendship going forward.
W7oMX TIL that after the U.S. Civil War former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens was elected Governor of Georgia.
wepP TIL that up to 45 million Chinese were killed in the Chinese government’s “Great Leap Forward”. Punishment for stealing a potato would be death by drowning, and parents were forced to bury their children alive or be drowned in urine. This makes the Great Leap Forward the largest 20th century murder.
R7aoQ TIL Nigeria's population is expected to not only surpass the US' population by the end of 2050, but to also become the third most populous country by the end of the century
VBLlp TIL that before there was the Silk Road, the Maritime Jade Road was established in Asia in the second century BCE starting from Taiwan travelling southwest to the Philippines and reaching all the way to Arabia