› added 4 years ago

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TIL a poor 19th century Chinese man failed the civil service exam, fell ill, reread a Christian pamphlet he had earlier ignored, & hallucinated that he was Jesus' brother. He led a cult/rebellion that conquered much of southern China, crowning himself as king. This civil war killed over 10 million.

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P10OJ TIL Tom Waits voiced a dog food commercial in 1981
6EjgQ TIL that when trains were first introduced in the U.S, many people believed that, "women's bodies were not meant to go at 50 miles an hour" and that their "uteruses would fly out of [their] bodies if they were accelerated to that speed"
wL7QE TIL that a plant named aconitum can easily kill people, be cautious while hiking
xV1No TIL of Idlewild, Michigan which from 1912 until the end of segregation was known as ‘The Black Eden’ - one of the few places where black Americans could fish, hunt, vacation, party and buy land in peace, without interference.
nelVY TIL that men have better spatial abilities than women, such as with mazes, mental rotation, and navigation. This is observed in other mammals too. The leading evolutionary explanation is that males tend to have larger habitat ranges than females