› added 12 years ago

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TIL the Manhattan Project secretly tested the effects of radiation on its own citizens, including injecting pregnant women and feeding schoolboys radioactive oatmeal.

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rDLw TIL Alabama’s constitution is the world’s longest in-use constitution, with 892 amendments. Most deal with local county-level matters, as state power is heavily centralized, and cover things like a single county’s school taxes, court fees, or bingo games. Also, Amendment 693 is inexplicably missing.
n0Yb TIL when the makers of OxyContin were sued by Kentucky over the drug, a survey was run to see if a jury would be impartial. Almost 40% of residents knew someone with criminal trouble because of the drug, 33% said they knew someone who overdosed/was seriously hurt, and 29% knew someone who died.
4VDg TIL Christian Slater made the lowest grossing movie of 2012: $264 from 33 tickets sold
xVDg5 TIL almost all of the vanilla produced in today’s world is pollinated by hand utilizing a technique developed by an enslaved boy back in 1841.
Vra8 TIL Koko the Gorilla loved Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. When Rogers met her, she hugged him and followed standard protocol based on what she’d seen on the show: she took his shoes off.