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TIL about practice babies. In the early to mid 1900s, orphaned babies were lent out to college home economics programs where they were taken care of entirely by groups of students in order to learn child-rearing skills.

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JYRv8 TIL the tradition of putting Christmas lights up outside started in Denver, CO on Christmas Eve, 1914. D.D. Sturgeon, founder of Sturgeon Electric, wanted to give his ill son some Christmas joy, so he wrapped his pine trees with electric bulbs, which were dipped in red and green paint.
78kOr TIL that between 15% and 30% of people have the photic sneeze reflex, which causes those afflicted to sneeze at the sun, sometimes multiple times in a row
x6lgg TIL that the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia when communism fell was Shirley Temple.
mjkP TIL that during America’s eugenics movement some 60,000 people were involuntarily sterilized. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote that “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
N7xE1 TIL that in 1953, the indiana textbook comission tried to ban 'Robin Hood' for promoting communist ideals.