› added 2 months ago

6

TIL the modern Oval Office was only created in 1934, and designed so that President Franklin D Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair, could move easily between the Office and the Residence.

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e7D6 TIL in Iran, opium is cheaper than beer.
JYeMV TIL that most indigenous communities who paint their bodies live in areas where there is an abundance of bloodsucking horseflies, mosquitoes, or tsetse flies - and a 2019 study showed that white, painted stripes on the body protect skin from insect bites, hence protecting them from airborne diseases
wLBb8 TIL there is a long lost tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue in NYC, that may contain an 18th century locomotive which is reported to be the hiding place of John Wilks Booth's lost diary. A man found the tunnel in 1980, but it was resealed by the city before he could finish searching for the train.
4XBBo TIL about Clarence Elkins, a man who was falsely convicted of murdering his mother-in-law. He believed that the killer was Earl Mann, a local criminal, also in the same jail. In prison, he stole one of Mann's cigarettes and sent it to his wife. After DNA testing showed a match, Elkins was released.
v14M7 TIL that under apartheid the Taiwanese, Koreans, and Japanese were classified as "honorary whites" while the Chinese were classified as "colored"