› added 12 years ago

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TIL in 1848 an iron rod exploded through the skull of a railroad foreman and landed 80 feet away. He was speaking and walking minutes later. The doctor didn’t believe him until a “teacupful of the brain” fell on the floor. He died 12 years later, after having portraits made of him holding the rod

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pYwrN TIL about the Union Army Balloon Corps, a branch of the Union Army during the American Civil War. It employed a group of prominent American aeronauts and seven specially built, hydrogen balloons to perform aerial reconnaissance on the Confederate States Army.
Z8RPv TIL That 200 years ago, Robert Gibbon Johnson ate a whole basket of tomatoes outside a courthouse to prove that they were safe to eat and not posionous!
DQEOV TIL that Columbus’s ship La Niña was only 50 feet long, and none of his three ships—Niña, Pinta, or Santa Maria—was greater than 60 feet long (18.29 m).
5YJeR TIL that monkeys with smaller testicles scream louder to compensate
j6Mgn TIL that the ancient Mayan city of Caracol in modern-day Belize was founded in 1200 BCE, held more than double the population of the largest current day city in Belize (of 61,461), and the one of its temples, Caana, built ~9th century CE, is still the tallest building in the country today.