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TIL that luffa / loofah are a vegetable that belong to the gourd family!

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5YAQP TIL: In 1982 Xerox management watched a film of people struggling to use their new copier and laughed that they must have been grabbed off a loading dock. The people struggling were Ron Kaplan, a computational linguist, and Allen Newell, a founding father of artificial intelligence.
oBxa8 TIL that Sergeant Stubby, a stray dog found during military training in 1917, served with the 102nd Infantry Regiment in WWI, saving them repeatedly due to his ability to smell mustard gas at a distance. After the war, he became a celebrity, meeting three presidents and traveling around the country.
nGnY TIL people in South Africa dry, grind up, and roll cigarettes out of vulture brains because they think it will help them predict lottery numbers.
0wMpj TIL the story of Horatio on the Bridge. A junior Roman officer, he defended a bridge leading to Rome when an Etruscan army invaded. While the rest had retreated, Horatio rallied men to destroy the bridge behind him while he stopped the enemy from crossing. Jumping into the river, he swam to safety.
8Vb TIL that Mansa Musa, Emperor of the Malian Empire, gave away so much gold to the poor that he devalued the currency and devastated the economy of the Middle East and North Africa for years