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TIL In the 1830s Americans drank an average of 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per year. Early Americans took a healthful dram for breakfast, whiskey was a typical lunchtime tipple, ale accompanied supper and the day ended with a nightcap.

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rRJOw TIL Matt Groening named the Simpsons characters after his own family members except for Bart which is an anagram of brat.
Me7r7 Unpredictable extremes of weather could be a huge problem. Simon N. Gosling, a geographer at the University of Nottingham in England, and Robert E. Davis of the University of Virginia agree that hotter weather on average isn't as dangerous as unexpected weather. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April looked at how temperature fluctuations over a single summer affect mortality in vulnerable populations.
mxQBv TIL November 14, 1910 Eugene Ely made the first airplane takeoff from a warship in a Curtiss pusher airplane from the cruiser USS Birmingham at Hampton Roads, VA. Ely later completes the first landing and takeoff from a ship in 1911. His flights marked the beginning of carrier aviation.
OnMa TIL a man named Jean Boulet safely landed a helicopter after the engine flamed out at 40,814 ft using a flying technique in which the rotor blades were driven solely by the upward flow of air through the rotor as the helicopter descended, called autorotation.
LkaZP TIL homophily describes the tendency of people to associate with those who look like them and have similar backgrounds. It is also related to assortative mating, the pattern of people (and other species) mating with those who look like them.