› added 4 years ago

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TIL Yuan Shikai was elected the first official president of the Republic of China, and was active in establishing modern industrial, judicial and educational systems as well as unifying the currency. As a young man, Yuan was also sent to Korea as supreme adviser on Korean government policies

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nLLb TIL Due to their intelligence, in some countries it is illegal to perform surgery on octopuses without anesthesia
x9pb TIL Charlie Chaplin would have canned The Great Dictator had he known about the actual horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at the time. “Had I known, … I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.”
8eLQV TIL that Winston Churchill was prescribed ‘Indefinite’ quantities of alcohol during prohibition
lo4Lr TIL in the film Paddington, the writers wanted the CGI bear to use a cake fork for a gag, but director Paul King had to veto it because it'd cost another £10k to render the fork in CGI
bPJp TIL 17th century Dutch blacksmith Jan de Doot allegedly removed an egg-sized bladder stone from himself using a procedure called lithotomy in which one makes an incision between the scrotum and the anus and removes the offending stone. He then set it in gold.