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TIL Elephants can distinguish human voices by sex, age, ethnicity, and language.

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KOQwR TIL when Spartans lost the battle of Megalopolis, their king Agis III, now wounded and unable to stand, ordered his men to leave him behind to face Macedonian army so that he could buy his men time to retreat. He slew several enemy soldiers before being finally killed by a javelin.
Z8AeB TIL Fred Astaire started skateboarding in his 70's, got a lifetime membership to the Nat'l Skateboard Society, and broke his wrist skateboarding at age 78.
JY4Nv TIL In '72 Billy Joel got into a legal battle with his label and was forbidden from recording. He moved to LA and played at a bar under an assumed name to earn money. This was the inspiration for the song "Piano Man". All the characters in the song were based on real people Joel had met at the bar.
pYBl8 TIL that Joseph Kerwin was convicted on 1904 of piracy after robbing Adelia Sweeting on a ship on Lake Erie, since this ship was judged to be in "high seas"
R7Gy7 TIL George C. Parker, the conman who fraudulently "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge multiple times, dodged his first prison sentence by grabbing a sheriff's uniform and walking out of the courthouse