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TIL that Nazi Germany conceived of a weapon called the "Sun Gun", which would have been a giant mirror in outer space that used concentrated sunlight to destroy entire cities.

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wLRQW TIL that Herbert Hoover's last known written words were a get well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom.
mKZO TIL that after Wernher von Braun’s first V2 rocket was used in combat, he was quoted as saying “the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet”.
gMa7y TIL Winston Churchill had zero qualms with using poisonous gasses on unruly subjects of the British Empire. "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," he declared in one secret memorandum.
d8gnj TIL every academic major in the US has a six-digit classification code per the National Center for Education Statistics
kbxe TIL the Chevalier d'Éon, French diplomat and spy, appeared publicly as male for 49 years but once infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by posing as a woman. In 1777, d'Éon began dressing publicly as a woman and claimed to be female.