› added 6 years ago

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TIL the name "Iraq" is though to have derived from the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk - one of humanity's first known cities.

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7rpDZ TIL local ABC affiliates owned by Sinclair Media refused to air "Saving Private Ryan" when it was aired nationally on Veterans Day 2004. Sinclair judged that the movie was "obscene" because it "contains numerous unedited uses of the F-word".
negMG TIL that the pseudonym Mark Twain actually comes from an archaic name for two fathoms, and that previous iterations of his name included “Josh” and “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”.
lokAa TIL researchers have been working for years to develop a strain of coffee plant which is naturally decaffeinated. While they made progress, there's a big drawback. Caffeine functions as a natural insecticide. By removing it from the plant, you leave the crop more vulnerable.
XEX6 TIL modern hospitals use maggots to clean wounds when antibiotics won’t work.
J18l8 TIL That "Tin Foil Hats" actually do protect from electromagnetic radiation