› added 12 years ago

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TIL in 1966–the same year as “Paint It Black,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Substitute,” “Wild Thing,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “The Sounds of Silence,” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’ ”–Billboard’s #1 song of the year was “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”

W7Ggo TIL absinthe, a spirit made with wormwood, has been banned across Europe in the early 20th century because of association with mental illness
Z8AxD TIL of Thallium Poisoning. A chemical often used for rat poison that kills slow and painfully through potassium channels. One of the main treatments is to feed the patient Prussian Blue paint
PYlMw TIL Al-Khwarizmi from Baghdad around A.D. 800 worked on a value of pi calculated to four decimal digits: 3.1416. The term 'algorithm' derives from his name, and his text Kitab al-Jabr wal-Muqabala gives us the word 'algebra' (from al-Jabr, which means 'completion' or 'restoration')
8aDEL TIL that Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas in the ground. It can build up in basements and crawl spaces, increasing the chances of lung cancer when breathed in because of the radiation.
jNN0n TIL a director of the movie 'Airplane!' spent $60,000 on 3 horses over ~4 years for a joke; "All Pink", "Ol Pink", and "Awl Pink". He instructed the jockey not to win, but to run as close to the inside rail as possible so the track announcer would have to call "...and it's All Pink on the inside!"