› added 10 years ago

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TIL that Lena Dunham did not in fact rise from obscurity. She was born to old-money artists and was mentioned in Vogue at the age of 12 and had an article written about her in the New York Times at the age of 16

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1a84O TIL the Rod of Asclepius, a snake winding around a stick and international symbol of medicine, represents the treatment for the bloodworm Dracunculus. This worm travels through the blood and eats its way to the skin: treatment involves wrapping the worm around a wooden stick and pulling it out.
VBlvp TIL glyphosate in urban humans' urine in the west exceeds 5-20x the amount permitted in German drinking water
Z8gjB TIL a baby Porcupine is called a Porcupette
LkarV TIL of Lord Timothy Dexter, an illiterate gold digger con man who fell backwards into piles of money despite being a complete idiot who made the worst investments ever that paid off by pure dumb luck.
j6XZj TIL that Philip Gale was a child prodigy who killed himself at age 19 by jumping from a classroom window. Before he did it, he wrote on the blackboard Newton's equation for how an object accelerates as it falls, along with a sketch of a stick figure tossing a chair. He signed it, " Phil was here. "