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TIL that the reason why ABBA and many Swedish bands wore tacky and glamour outfits in the 70s and 80s was due to tax write-offs

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jN8rp TIL that Caligula once tricked a man into buying 13 gladiators for the high price of 9 million Roman sesterces. He had been selling off some gladiators to replenish the Roman treasury, when he saw a man fall asleep at the auction. He told the auctioneer to consider each of the mans nods as a bid.
ZpvG4 TIL about escheatment. Traced back in feudal times and still exists in modern times.
Z0op TIL it would actually take 5 minutes of inhaling an item soaked in chloroform to render a person unconscious
dy0Z TIL that Stephen King wrote Carrie on an old typewriter while living in a trailer. He threw away the first 3 pages thinking he had written “the world’s all time loser.” His wife fished the pages out and pushed him to finish it. It turned out to be his first published novel.
grLy8 TIL In 1976, Ray Kurzweil unveiled the first reading machine for the blind, using optical character recognition and text-to-speech technology. After hearing about it on The Today Show, Stevie Wonder became its first user and a lifelong supporter.