› added 2 years ago

102

TIL of Harry Hopkins, FDR's closest confidant and right-hand man in World War II. In 1939, he suffered from stomach cancer and lost 75% of his stomach in an operation. Told that he had only four weeks to live, Hopkins suffered through poor health to work throughout World War II, and died in 1946.

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xVNGo TIL that ventilators used to be respirators that holds a patient in an air-tight horizontal chamber with patient’s head out, pumping negative pressure to help the patient breathe back in 1930-1950s due to the polio epidemic
kOee5 TIL that during a particularly cold spell in the town of Snag (Yukon) where the temp reached -83f (-63.9c) you could clearly hear people speaking 4 miles away along with other phenomenon such as peoples breath turning to powder and falling straight to the ground & river ice booming like gunshots.
ng1r TIL in the US, more intelligent people tend to be more liberal or libertarian while in places like Brazil, more intelligent people tend to vote for more centrist parties.
yQbe8 TIL that Rebecca Burger, a 33 year old fitness blogger, died after a pressurized canister of whipped cream exploded and struck her in the chest
EgVg7 TIL the second Rashidun caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, a senior companion and father-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, was assassinated by a Persian slave in 644 who stabbed him with a double-bladed dagger, apparently due to Umar's refusal to lift a daily tax imposed on the slave by his slave master.