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TIL that President Lincoln essentially bribed Congress to outlaw slavery by offering lame-duck congressmen cushy government jobs in a then-legal form of corruption known as the patronage system

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k0Md TIL On Earth, there was a time when forests didn’t decompose; no life had evolved to eat trees yet.
1rbV TIL that Dr. Ben Carson, an African American conservative that frequently appears on Fox News, was the first person to successfully separate conjoined twins from the head, a task that involved him leading a 70 man team for 22 hours.
JY96m TIL of the ringed caecilian. An amphibian whose nestlings use teeth to feed on their mothers outer skin.
N7KoE TIL prolific film actor John Carradine died after climbing the 328 steps of Milan's cathedral at the start of a European vacation. His actor son David was with him, reading Shakespeare to him when he succumbed, and John's final words were reportedly "Milan: What a beautiful place to die"
neV5r TIL a guy made $1,000,000 by selling each pixel on a 1000 x 1000 pixel web page for $1 a pixel. The Million Dollar Homepage was created in 2005 to raise money for his university fees. The inventor went on to create a company today valued at $250m.