R5GKQ TIL that apparently Mark Hamill did some voice work before "Star Wars" (this is from "The New Scooby-Doo Movies", which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1973; he is credited at around 0:34). He's come a long way since then...
W7m4A TIL that bamboo forests (aka canebrakes) used to be widespread across the southeastern United States. They were rapidly destroyed by early settlers because they tend to only grow on land that’s the most fertile for agriculture. Today canebrakes are considered a critically endangered ecosystem
9w9yX TIL that The Gambia is only one of two countries that which uses the definitive article "the" in its name & the only one of those two who capitalise 'The'.
nWYKP TIL the third-largest car bombing in United States history, surpassed only by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, was the 1994 car bombing of Hell's Henchmen clubhouse in Chicago, IL with 100 lbs of C-4 by the Outlaw biker gang ordered by Harry "Taco" Bowman.
4kQyJ TIL Ethiopia and Somalia have had on and off conflict with each other since the 1300s
x6G0g TIL that France is still technically led by a monarch. In 13th century, rule of the nation of Andorra was split between two “co-princes” - the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix. The latter claim is inherited by the French head of state.
epXN5 TIL that Justin Zackham, the writer of the 2007 film The Bucket List, coined the expression "bucket list" after he wrote his own "List of Things to do Before I Kick the Bucket" and shortened it to "Justin's Bucket List". The first item on his list was to "get a film made at a major studio".
VBD54 TIL if you rearrange the digits of a 4 digit number into ascending order, then take the initial number and rearrange it into descending order and subtract the second number from the first, repeating this will almost always result in 6174 (Kaprekar's constant).
X0ynj TIL the world’s first official coins were minted in the ancient kingdom of Lydia around 600 BC. Made from a natural gold-silver alloy called electrum
OGd77 TIL that U.S. General George S. Patton competed in modern pentathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics when he was a 26-year-old officer. He fainted from exertion after running 2.5 miles; used a .38-caliber weapon instead of .22; and placed fifth, with Swedish athletes winning bronze, gold, and silver.
69xym TIL about the Mormon Battalion, an infantry battalion of the US Army. It was the only unit in American military history recruited solely from one religious group and having a religious title as the unit designation. The only "battle" they fought was against a sizable number of wild cattle.
wo106 TIL for the last few decades a former Cold War spy and mathematical savant has been card-counting at casinos to fund his creation of complex calendrical puzzle-paintings targeted towards a future audience of hyper-intelligent robots