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TIL in 1956, a magician was performing the “cut a person in half” trick using his wife for a televised performance. Immediately after she was divided, the host ended the show. People were horrified, thinking she had been killed, but time had just run out on the broadcast.

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v1VpB TIL Episode 122 of The Twilight Zone, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, was a French film short that had won awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962 and an Oscar for Live Action Short Film in 1963. Producers paid $25,000 for rights that limited them to airing the story no more than two times.
J1R4B TIL that in Old English "deer" described any animal. As language evolved, the meaning changed and narrowed until it started to describe only one type of animal. It's a change unique to English and Scots, as "deer" (tier, djur, dyr, dier, etc.) still means animal in all other Germanic languages.
kJY7m TIL after being sent to Baltimore in his youth, Frederick Douglass learned the alphabet from the mistress of the house he moved into. When the mistress' husband put an end to the lessons, Douglass began trading bread to hungry neighborhood children who, in turn, helped him learn how to read & write
wrwW TIL: There are an estimated 70 sextillion stars in the known universe (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
JdJ4 TIL that President Lyndon B. Johnson used to troll guests in his car by driving into a lake whilst pretending that the brakes were failing – the car was, secretly, an amphibious vehicle.