› added 9 months ago

65

TIL hookers were named after General Hooker during the Civil War.

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5VQ5B TIL that bulimia is socially contagious. Fiji had never had a report of anyone with an eating disorder, but within three years after television was introduced in 1995, a study found 11% of Fiji’s adolescent girls had purged their food at least once. By 2007, it was 45%.
l7nWG TIL in 2003, 12yo Auri Allen was featured on Ripley's Believe It or Not due to his massive size, nicknamed Baby Shaq. By 2006, he was regarded as one of the top 5 basketball players in the country, until a car crash paralyzed him. He later became a Head Coach and founded his own basketball academy.
vPyZL TIL "corn smut" is a food, and apparently tasty if you're a mushroom person.
kJok1 TIL that this brief interview in the 1950s educational series "Youth Wants to Know" is the only known surviving video footage of the renowned mathematician John Von Neumann.
QJY6e TIL that Henry VIII was sometimes called "Old Coppernose." He issued debased coins to fund wars and one coin was mostly copper with a thin layer of silver on top. The coin had a portrait of Henry and his projecting nose caused the silver to wear off first exposing the copper underneath.