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279

TIL of Berthe Mayne, a Belgian singer who claimed to her family to have survived the sinking of the Titanic, traveling 1st class under an alias as the mistress of a young Canadian millionaire. No one believed her until after her death, when her belongings and correspondence corroborated the story.

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QJmxE TIL the US made Schoolhouse Rock-like cartoons called The Metric Marvels in 1978 to prepare the country to switch to the metric system
KMyJ TIL Owsley Stanley, the soundguy for the Grateful Dead, was the first person to mass produce LSD, distributing over 1.25 million doses in just two years.
lQmN TIL In 1944, Mary Babnik Brown became the first woman to have her hair used in crosshairs for military aircraft bombsights. The hair had to fit strict criteria such as being blonde, over 22 inches long and never been treated with chemicals or hot irons.
ONk6 TIL of the US 77th Division’s “Lost Battalion”, nine WWI companies that held their ground in the Argonne for six days after accidentally advancing too far; surrounded by Germans, shelled by their own artillery, and low on rations and ammunition, only 194 out of approximately 544 men were rescued
0dwM TIL that Lyndon B. Johnson enjoyed showing his penis, which he nicknamed “Jumbo,” to his colleagues at the US Capitol. On the floors of the house and senate, he was known to “extravagantly rummage away at his groin.”