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TIL Afraid of flying, Muhammad Ali spent his first flight praying with the parachute strapped to his back. He was heading to Rome.

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69Mk7 TIL if you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1000 copies (1,500 if a children's book) and distribute them to libraries throughout the country.
5Vnen TIL that New Zealand author Janet Frame was falsely diagnosed as schizophrenic and was scheduled to be lobotomised. Several days before the operation, she won New Zealand's most prestigious literary prize, convincing doctors to cancel the procedure.
yV778 TIL that VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was also the first "killer app" (a program that makes people buy a computer just to run the software). VisiCalc was so revolutionary, and so powerful, that people bought the $2000 Apple II (the only computer it ran on) to run the $100 application.
Egvw TIL the Catholic Church owns a media company that publishes pornography and erotica
Z8N7a TIL that during the soviet era, Polish artists created official movie posters for international movies that were released in Poland. Bypassing governmental control, iconic and unique movie posters emerged, expressing the true spirit of the artists and looking nothing like the original posters.