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TIL when Gene Wilder was offered the role of Willy Wonka, he accepted on one condition: he'd enter with a limp, lose his cane and continue to limp, and then when he's found out, perform a somersault for the crowd, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth."

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gGmW TIL that the future US President Millard Fillmore was captured by pirates when he was a fisherman and was forced into servitude for ninth months. He then killed the boatswain with an axe and led a revolt to recapture the ship. He then sailed the ship back to Boston were the pirates were hanged.
5YPpn TIL that Spanish military outpost Penon de Velez de la Gomera on the Moroccan coastline forms the shortest international border in the entire world, spanning only 74 meters. It was also once an island until a 1934 storm left the sandy isthmus that serves as the border today.
BgX4x TIL The US military sprayed 73 million liters of Agent Orange on Vietnam and was originally called Operation Hades. US soldiers, unaware of the dangers, sometimes showered in the empty 55-gallon drums, used them to store food, and repurposed them as barbecue pits.
pWVA TIL Yukon Cornelius constantly licked his pick because in the original version of “Rudolph” he was searching for peppermint, not silver and gold.
VM9Op TIL Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD, has given erowid, a web forum dedicated to psychedelic substances, a signed sheet of blotter paper that can be had for a donation of $50,000