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TIL in California, a black man named Ward Connerly successfully abolished the governmental program “Affirmative Action” which gave preferential treatment to minorities

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b959p TIL after Salvador Dalí and Harpo Marx met and expressed mutual admiration, Dalí sent Harpo a Christmas present: a harp with barbed wire for strings and spoons for tuning knobs, wrapped in cellophane. Harpo was delighted and sent Dalí a photo of himself sitting at the harp with bandaged fingers.
JYnll TIL Astronomers discovered that all disk galaxies rotate once every billion years, no matter their size.
pYGKb TIL one of the first use of avant-garde technique of tape manipulation in music was the 1955 hit "Jingle Bells" by The Singing Dogs. Using a razor, Carl Weismann cut, then spliced sounds of dog barks together, correcting speed, pitch and melody of the resulting tape. It reached #22 on Billboard.
69YLW TIL that the French had for the best part of 5 centuries a very lucrative salt tax. So much so that at some point it was as valuable to France, as the American silver mines were to Spain (according to Cardinal Richelieu)
jNBEM TIL that Massachusetts once banned Christmas for 22 years because people celebrated too hard--drinking too much, partying in the streets, and breaking into houses