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TIL the gyroscopic monorail was invented in Ireland and despite being championed by Churchill, didn’t catch on.

ANxew TIL: That two days before the outbreak of WWII, the BBC was taken off air; the final broadcast being the Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Mickey's Gala Premier". BBC Television returned at 3pm on 7th June 1946 and twenty minutes later, aired the same Mickey Mouse cartoon that they had broadcast in 1939.
mxxYo TIL French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, the illegitimate child of a prostitute, aspired to be a nun, and while in a convent, she was accused of sacrilege for arranging a Christian burial for her pet lizard.
x6Pbo TIL about an American singer named, Orion. His voice was similar to Elvis Presley's, a fact which he and his record company played upon, making some believe that some of his recordings were by Presley, or even that Presley had not died in 1977.
Yp8nZ TIL about British Double Summer Time. During WW2, after moving an hour forward for DST in 1940, they didn’t roll back in fall. They moved forward again in spring of ‘41, resulting in being 2 hours ahead. It helped people finish their day and get home with some extra light during enforced blackouts.
geQA TIL that Wilhelm Furtwängler, a leading German conductor, called Hitler a “hissing street pedlar” and an “enemy of the human race”. He also refused to give the Nazi salute, wrote public letters denouncing antisemitism, and once got into a shouting match with Hitler over Nazi cultural policy.