› added 11 years ago

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TIL John Chambers, the make-up artist portrayed by John Goodman in the movie Argo, not only won the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit for his role in helping rescue American embassy personnel from Iran, he created the pointed ears worn by Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek.

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ZpwkY TIL about the Toshka Project, which consists in the creation of a second Nile valley thanks to water from the Nasser Lake to increase the share of inhabited land of Egypt from 5% to 25%
Knb4 TIL that there are more African American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined.
JYEkl TIL that in 2005 a contestant from the infamous Hands On A Hardbody Competition killed himself after staying awake for over 48 hours. Other contestants have stayed awake much longer to win. The story made it to Broadway.
awW7L TIL of the 1977 Chicago Bulls "Astronaut draft" of Armstrong, Glenn, and Sheppard.
9YDdQ TIL the Nigerian government has removed history from the secondary school curriculum as a result of the Nigerian civil war (the biafran war) being too controversial, where the Nigerian government blockaded and starved 3 million people to death.