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TIL that a 1976 episode of Sesame Street featured The Wicked Witch of the West becoming the crush of Oscar the Grouch and threatening to turn Big Bird into a feather duster, among other things. The episode was aired only once because “the threat of the witch’s power [remained] in children’s eyes.”

a8DPM TIL about Washington D. C.'s Height of Buildings Act of 1899 - still in effect. New technologies in construction were allowing for taller buildings but people were afraid of what they didn't understand. Also, fire fighting equipment, at this time, could only reach a maximum height of 130 feet.
MemAV TIL Hilda Woodward was one of the oldest female artists to feature in a song that became a Number One single in the United Kingdom. Woodward, who played piano for the band "Lieutenant Pigeon" alongside son and frontman Rob, was 58 when "Mouldy Old Dough" reached Number One. She died aged 85 in 1999.
rNlPo TIL of the "Hippy Trail" when thousands of western hippies traveled the Silk Road by bus, car, van, motorcycle, or hitch hiking, mingling with locals in Afghanistan (and the entire Silk Road) in the 1960s-70s, officially ending in 1979 when the Afghanistan war started
J1p4k TIL that Metallica can be used to repel cougars
a86lL TIL dunce caps were originally a sign of high intelligence and wisdom. Philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus was a proponent of pointy hats as a way to funnel knowledge to the mind and his followers, called Dunsmen, wore them. By the 1500s the Dunsmen fell out of favor as “behind the times”.