› added 9 years ago

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TIL Michael Crichton had an MD from Harvard, although he never obtained a license to practice medicine. He also believed patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors.

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VMKpp TIL Mountain Dew was originally developed as a mixer for liquor. Tennessee bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman developed Mountain Dew as a mixer in the 1940s as they had difficulty in Knoxville obtaining their preferred soda to mix with liquor, preferably whiskey, so they developed their own.
6EYYm TIL Northern Hemisphere rainwater still contains 3x as much radioactive tritium than Southern Hemisphere rainwater due to atmospheric nuclear bomb tests from the 1960s
rNBaW TIL that octopuses have three hearts. Two of these hearts pump blood to the gills, while the third pumps it to the rest of the body. When an octopus swims, the heart that delivers blood to the body actually stops beating, which explains why they prefer crawling to swimming—it’s less tiring for them!
4RKR TIL the individual U.S. federal income tax rate in the early 1960s for the highest incomes was 91%
BZBe TIL: All aircraft carriers in history (save two) have their bridges on the starboard side due to a near universal tendency of pilots to veer left in an emergency.