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TIL Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic medicine, had the idea that surgeons could prevent infecting their patients by washing and disinfecting their hands with carbolic acid before surgery. This idea earned him ridicule—until people started noticing that it did indeed help.

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Gb5G TIL in 2006, a bank manager in China stole $26,000 from the bank. His plan was to purchase lottery tickets with the intent of winning enough that he could return the money before the theft was discovered and still have some left over for himself. Despite the odds, his plan succeeded.
4X8xo TIL that Ankylosaurus’s armour plates were flexible and interwoven with collagen fibers, making them much tougher than other armoured animals.
awmbM TIL about Air Sinai - a highly secretive paper airline flying unmarked EgyptAir jets between Cairo and Tel Aviv. It was established as part of the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, but the animosity between Arabs and Israelis following the Intifada resulted the airline 'hiding' its operations.
b6Yxp Today I learned that according to a study from British psychologist Kevin Dutton, being a civil servant is the 10th career path with the highest number of psychopaths.
vJMB TIL that in 1968 an American vessel was captured by North Korea. The crew was abused, and to show the world, they used puns (“We paean the DPRK [North Korea]. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung”) and gave the middle finger in propaganda photographs, claiming it was a “Hawaiian good luck sign”.