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1017

TIL of the most famous person ever to have literally been in a pickle, Horatio Nelson. He died at sea, so the surgeon on board pickled his body in brandy to preserve it for the long trip to England. 2 weeks into the journey, gaseous pressures burst the cask lid, making Nelson "rise from the dead."

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6E9kw TIL in 2000 16-year-old Henry Cavill was an aspiring actor who had a chance encounter with Russell Crowe. Crowe sent him a gift box with a note saying "Dear Henry, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Russell." 13 years later, they starred together in “Man of Steel.”
aRjN TIL that since most people in Japan and China use their phones or computers to phonetically convert the Latin alphabet to type Chinese characters, more people are forgetting how to write some characters by hand. On a Chinese TV show, only 30% of participants could write “toad”, 癞蛤蟆 (Lài há ma).
wL7NJ TIL of Otokichi, a Japanese sailor who was shipwrecked and drifted to the Pacific Northwest in 1834. He stayed with the native Makah tribe before the local British agent sent him to London. He then moved to Macao and worked for the British, only returning to Japan twice more (once in disguise).
78pGx TIL that The Beatles once held the top 5 spots of the Billboard Hot 100 - more than anyone else ever - but had another 7 songs on the list at the time.
NXr88 TIL beginning in 46 B.C., in celebration of Julius Caesar's return to Rome after defeating Pompey the Great, the Colosseum was ordered to be flooded for a ship battle reenactment in honor of his military efforts against Gaul & Egypt.