› added 11 years ago

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TIL… In 1977, a 23-year old graduate student stumbled upon a compound with effects similar to heroin. He made a bunch and shared it with his friends to get high, except the batch he made was contaminated with a toxic byproduct that left them all with debilitating Parkinson’s Disease within a week.

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7r7Lp TIL in 1665 the Derbyshire village of Eyam made the remarkable decision to quarantine itself in an attempt to halt the spread of the Great Plague. 260 from 76 different families died, but the plague didn't reach the nearby towns of Sheffield and Bakewell
neoa9 TIL For every mile traveled, motorcyclists have a risk of a fatal accident that is 35 times higher than a car driver.
QaM TIL mosquitoes are adapted to ignore side-to-side movement; a resting female permits a finger to approach slowly if the finger moves several centimetres from side to side about once a second. With practice one can use this stratagem to squash resting mosquitoes with high frequency.
E1Pk0 TIL in 2011, a write-in candidate for a board of education election needed only one vote to win, but she lost because she thought her friends/family would vote (they didn't) and was too busy at her son's baseball game to vote for herself.
YMnr TIL: Table Knives are rounded instead of pointed to prevent people from picking their teeth and from stabbing each other