› added 9 years ago

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TIL in 1951 a researcher discovered something never seen before. Cells from a woman named Henrietta Lacks could be kept alive and grown. 20 tons of her cells have been grown to date.

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Bg4Rd TIL left handed people are significantly more likely to be paedophiles
rr01 TIL that astrophysicist Carl Sagan and his wife would smuggle books about the history of the Russian Revolution into the USSR so that their colleagues could read them, since recorded history lessons in Russia were actively manipulated by Joseph Stalin at the time.
16AMr TIL about China's Gutter Oil and Spit Oil industry. Where cooking oils are recycled from gutters and sewers, and leftover liquid from someones meal in a restaurant is reused in the next customers meal. It's a common practice despite penalties for the practice including being sentenced to death.
XEX7j TIL The Shanghai heroin trade in the 1920s was dominated by two men. One was Chief of Police, the other was head of the government Anti-Opium Board.
LkL8Z TIL France and Mexico fought a war 1838 over unpaid pastries