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TIL that J.R.R. Tolkien. once received a goblet from a fan inscribed with "One Ring to Rule Them All..." inscribed on the rim in black speech. Tolkien never drank out of it, since it was written in an accursed language, and instead used it as an ashtray.

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a8bZ0 TIL Pre-Islamic Central Asia was primarily inhabited by Iranian peoples, including the Sogdians, Bactrians, and Scythians. However, waves of migrations and conquests, especially by the Mongol Empire, led to their replacement by Turkic groups such as the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Turkmens.
E1Lnx TIL Actress Cassandra Peterson, best known for her horror character Elvira, was severely burned by boiling water as a child. She underwent 17 skin grafts throughout her childhood, covering over 35% of her body.
VBnkZ TIL about Gödel's Loophole. While studying for his American citizenship test, Kurt Gödel believed he had found a flaw in the US constitution that would permit the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Einstein advised him not to mention it during the test.
kBgW TIL that between 1885 and 1887 Alfred Barnard visited every working whisk(e)y distillery in Great Britain and Ireland. He went on to publish a 500 page book: “The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom,” one of the definitive texts on whisky. Two years later did the same thing for breweries.
b9XYQ TIL that after Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933 - 1945) the US hasn't had a President who speaks fluently a second language.