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TIL during WWI all Army recruits underwent intelligence testing, the largest mass testing that had ever been attempted before. By the end of the war, close to 2 million soldiers had been tested. As a result of the tests roughly half of the recruits were classified at or below the level of "moron"

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7rGJM TIL that child auctions were commonplace in Finland and Sweden up until the mid 1930's. The children involved were orphans or from extremely poor backgrounds and were sold to the lowest bidder. The children were provided with a home and education but were also expected to work in return.
7rbJX TIL eating boogers is good for your immune system and teeth.
8axVL TIL in the original BBC version of The Office, Ricky Gervais's character frequently used the phrase "as the actress said to the bishop" as an inappropriate joke. When the show was adapted for American audiences the phrase was translated to "that's what she says" for Steve Carell's Michael Scott
JYEKQ TIL: Chemists Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina were ridiculed by representatives of the aerosol and halocarbon industries for their hypothesis that CFCs would lead to depletion of the ozone layer. The chair of DuPont called it: "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense".
lopNB TIL An extinct penguin-like bird, The Great Auk, ranged as far south as northern Spain and along the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain. It lived with humans for centuries until it was seen as "resource" and was extinct by 1852.