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TIL that telling “scary ghost stories” on Christmas eve is an all but lost Victorian tradition

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xwr0 TIL billionaire Sean Parker was considered a genius at a young age. In high school he was recruited by the CIA after winning a computer science fair and was making $80,000/year by the time he was a senior
gnQA TIL in Mexico the act of escaping from prison is considered legal because the law recognizes that all people have a fundamental desire to be free.
LQMbV TIL that the library career of the creator of the Dewey Decimal system, Melvil Dewey ended in disgrace, because of his groping of female librarians. Dewey also insisted on seeing photographs of the women before he would hire them, to determine if they were attractive or not.
PYwaE TIL about the Aroostook War, a diplomatic spat between British Canada and the US over the official border between New Brunswick and Maine in 1838-39. While no shots were fired, police, militia and lumberjacks were mobilized. The only reported casualties were two Canadians mauled by a bear.
LkrM0 TIL the first use of Biological Warfare, and the cause of one of the first recorded epidemics ever, occured when the Hittite Empire released rams infected with Tularemia into enemy lands over 3500 years ago.