› added 5 years ago

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TIL about Lakshmi Tatma, an Indian girl born with four arms and four legs. Named after a Hindu goddess often depicted as four-armed, the girl became worshipped, and a circus offered to buy her. After a 27-hour surgery done by thirty surgeons, done for free, Lakshmi's extra limbs were removed.

R154 TIL some people have “blindsight.” They are blind due to damage in the brain’s visual cortex, but the eye and optic nerve are fine. They can’t consciously see anything but can guess their way through an obstacle course or guess the emotional content of a photo through intuition with decent accuracy.
jNXVE TIL about the fact that snakes do turn out to be more social than previously believed and apparently have more complex social interactions than we had previously known.
kO10g TIL Nestlé sued the writers of a booklet called “The Baby Killer”, about Nestlé’s aggressive marketing of baby formula in 3rd world countries, for libel. The court ruled in Nestlé’s favor since they wouldn’t have been found guilty of murder “in terms of criminal law" but fined the writers just $400.
lo1DB TIL that 7 years after the U.S. acquired of what is today Washington state, "Columbia" was originally given the name of the new territory in 1853. However, Congress changed the name to "Washington", arguing that people would easily be confused with the nation's capital, the District of Columbia.
xDm0 TIL that in 2005 a Texas man shot himself in the face after a bullet he fired at an armadillo ricocheted of the animal.