› added 7 months ago

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TIL René Lacoste won 7 Grand Slam tennis titles, won a bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics, founded the Lacoste clothing company, and invented the first tubular steel racket at a time when wood rackets were the norm.

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Ka9J TIL The Pentagon is 6.5M square ft (2X the Empire State Building) and is occupied by 23,000 people, making it the biggest office building in the world. Also, it was designed so that no point in the building is more than a 10 minutes walk from another point. Construction took just 16 months.
yKdp TIL The Hairy Frog breaks it own bones to make claws.
nepL9 TIL of Mauro Prosperi who survived for 9 days alone in the Saharan Desert on a diet of urine and bats after becoming disoriented and travelling nearly 200 miles in the wrong direction during an endurance event. He was found in Algeria despite the race taking part in Morocco
mJgP TIL after French soldier Jean Bernadotte showed kindness to a few Swedish soldiers, he became so popular in Sweden that the Swedes decided to make him their king when a vacancy came up, despite him never having set foot in Sweden before. The House of Bernadotte rules Sweden to this day.
EJXP TIL that in the late 1600s London was plagued by an attacker who would spank his victims with a rod and shout “Spanko!” before running away