› added 6 years ago

458

TIL almost an entire French town in 1951 was poisoned by ergot, the fungus LSD is made from. ”I am dead and my head is made of copper and I have snakes in my stomach and they are burning me,” screamed one man before trying to jump into a river

Read more smithsonianmag.com

via reddit.com

wRe6 TIL Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols would catapult the dead bodies of soldiers infected by the bubonic plague over city walls during sieges. This is one of the earliest accounts biological warfare.
5YOGn TIL in 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two heads of the Black Panther Party, were killed in their sleep by Chicago Police. It was described as a gunfight, but 99% of bullets were found to have been shot from the police, & fake bullet holes from the inside were found to have been planted by police
0wAGy TIL that in 1905 JP Morgan hired a young black woman as his personal librarian. Over the next 40 years she established his library as one of the premier collections of rare books and manuscripts in the world.
p8OeO TIL married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also live longer than men without spouses.
Br8lr TIL that in the painting “American Gothic” it’s a father and daughter, not husband and wife pictured.