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TIL Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference and caused he and his crew's near starvation.

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P17LL TIL that years before the upcoming Gladiator 2, Russell Crowe commissioned a script for a sequel in which Maximus goes to the afterlife and gets resurrected, appearing in World War 2 and the Vietnam War, and ending with him in a suit and tie at the modern-day Pentagon.
KY8OR T​IL about James Graham​, ​a 18th century Scottish sexologist, who treated patients at his 'Celestial Bed', a canopied "wonder-working edifice" covered in musical automata, fresh flowers & live turtle dove​s, and which stimulated couples to conceive with oriental fragrances and celestial sounds
Y7ORP TIL In 1979 a rabbit, hissing and baring its teeth, swam up to Jimmy Carter’s boat while he was fishing. He shooed it away with a paddle, but the incident damaged his reputation
6Aml TIL the late King Olav V of Norway used public transport. He was nicknamed Folkekonge, “The people’s king”.
8eEpV TIL George Picquart, an anti-semitic French army officer, helped to convict fellow officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, of treason. Subsequently promoted to lead the secret intelligence service, he then discovered and exposed the conspiracy that had framed Dreyfus, eventually toppling the government.