› added 2 months ago

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TIL of the prominent political Frelinghuysen family of New Jersey. They helped established Rutgers University, attended the continental congress, ran for VP in 1844, and had a family member in congress as recently as 2019.

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LkdkV TIL: The Ogre Faced Spider's eyes are more sensitive than both a cat's and an owls, but every day at dawn the photosensitive portion of it's eyes are destroyed by the sun, and the arachnid has to regrow this portion each and every evening.
oRvNW TIL Cyril Radcliffe was given only five weeks to draw the borders between the newly independent India and Pakistan. Additionally the English Radcliffe had never been further east than Paris when he was chosen for the job. 14 million people had to move as a result of Radcliffe's borders.
D1BDJ TIL chief justice John Marshall and his fellow justices enjoyed Madeira wine, but set a rule that they would only drink on rainy days. When Marshall was told it was a sunny day, he said, 'this is a large area we have jurisdiction over, I'm sure it's raining somewhere.'
4kRvR TIL In 1988 Ivan McGuire, an experienced skydiver with 800 recorded dives jumped from the plane for his 3rd dive that day. He had his camera rig with him but completely forgot to equip a parachute rig, thus he jumped to his death from 10.000 feet. The camera footage of the fatal fall survived
xV0KD TIL the first ever strike in written records was amongst the workers by the Valley of The Kings in Egypt, around 1170 B.C