› added 4 years ago

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TIL the man who discovered the placebo effect, Henry K. Beecher, was a medic in WW2. After running out of morphine doses for his soldiers, he gave them a saline solution which did not include an active drug. To his surprise, most patients reported pain relief, despite having severe war injuries.

JY7kv TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.
QJ1pE TIL various sequels to Space Jam were considered after its success, including Spy Jam (starring Jackie Chan), Race Jam (starring Jeff Gordon), and Skate Jam (starring Tony Hawk).
oRBlL TIL In 6th century BC, at the ancient Olympics, Bybon lifted a 316 lb. (143k) stone over his head with one hand. The feat was inscribed on the stone itself.
K5jJ TIL President Andrew Jackson had to leave for a hotel when roughly 20,000 citizens celebrated his inauguration inside the White House. His aides ultimately had to lure the mob outside with washtubs filled with a potent cocktail of orange juice and whiskey.
xVn05 TIL From 1847, Rudolf Wolf started counting sunspots. He peered through a telescope every day, if he could, and recorded the number of spots he observed. Today, all sorts of models use Wolf's sunspot record to predict things like the climate, the orbit of satellites, and the stability of power grids