› added 7 years ago

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TIL of Dr. Howard Jones, who in 1978 was forced into retirement due to rigid age restrictions for surgeons at Johns Hopkins. Rather than end his medical career, Jones moved to Virginia, where in 1981 at the age of 70, he performed the first IVF case in the U.S. He died in 2015 at the age of 104.

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kOdNg TIL Willem Kolff created the first dialysis machine in the Netherlands during WWII. Lacking materials, he used sausage casings, tin cans, a washing machine, and salt water. He also saved more than 800 people from the Nazis by hiding them in his hospital. And he later invented the artificial heart.
vPjP8 TIL that Jolly Ranchers are technically a type of glass.
1gEr TIL there is a cola named OpenCola witch is open source. The instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License.
nJGG TIL the Great Pyramid of Giza was once covered in highly polished white limestone, before it was removed to build mosques and fortresses.
6EayY TIL that historically, polio was not widely fatal. 72% of all infections were asymptomatic; 24% resulted in mild illness; 1-5% resulted in more serious but short-term symptoms. But polio was still feared, due to the <1% of cases that led to permanent paralysis and death in a further 5-30% of them.