› added 8 years ago

165

TIL that Mississippi, which is 37% Black, has not had a Black senator for 135 years.

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OgVe TIL that the saying ‘to take with a grain of salt" comes from Pliny the Elder, who wrote about an antidote for a certain poison, having as one of its ingredients a measure of salt. He thought that if an antidote involved salt, then the poison itself should be regarded less seriously than normal.
pYWLe TIL W. E. B. Du Bois attended the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Germany, where he met many well-known social scientists, among them, Max Weber. He would later return to Harvard University (where he already earned his bachelor's in 1890) and earn his PhD in 1895.
5YkJp TIL the actor who played Uncle Lewis in Christmas Vacation (William Hickey) was only 61 years old when the movie was filmed
wNvJ TIL A former dictator of of Myanmar thought 9 was his lucky number, so decreed that all currency denominations not divisible by 9 no longer had value, devastating the savings of much of the population.
LrKd TIL Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC, faced harassment based on her ethnicity after her design was picked, including presidential candidate Ross Perot calling her an “egg roll”.