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TIL That Chinese Tourists got so bad the government stepped in and published a How to Guide in order to avoid embarrassment. One of the tips was "Don’t spit phlegm or gum, throw litter, urinate or defecate wherever you feel like it."

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4a0X TIL that x represents the unknown in Algebra only because there isn’t a ‘sh’ sound in Spanish. The Arabic word شيءٌ (shay'on, literally 'something’) was originally used to denote the unknown in a math equation. It was translated to Chi (X) when the Arabs brought Algebra to Spain.
0o0p TIL the screenplay for Pirates of the Caribbean was finished in the 1990s. Steven Spielberg stumbled upon it and campaigned to direct the film with Robin Williams starring as Jack Sparrow
VMkRk TIL that a young Winston Churchill was on a South African train ambushed by Boers. Captured and sent to a prison camp, he escaped and then evaded a massive manhunt by hiding in a mine for days. He later led the liberation of the 180 soldiers remaining in the prison and returned home a hero.
4BJX TIL that before it became Islam’s holiest site, the Ka’ba housed pagan idols from all over the region and helped one family monopolize trade on the Arab Peninsula since members of every religion took pilgrimages to visit it
yXKJ TIL Stanley Kubrick fooled the MPAA into thinking that the blood flowing out of the elevator in The Shining was just “rusty water”