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94

TIL of Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who kept a vast collection of handwritten notes on top secret files. When he defected to British Intelligence in 1992, he brought six trunks of notes with him that exposed most KGB activities in the West during the Cold War

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9YbgG TIL On May 5, 1809, Mary Kies' patent for a new technique of weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats was signed by President James Madison. She was the first woman to receive a U.S. Patent
d8VQ8 TIL Barnum and Bailey’s circus was so logistically efficient that prior to WWI the U.S. War Department would periodically send army officers to travel with them and study their transportation methods in order to improve the logistics of the army’s own artillery service (Davis, 2003, p. 78).
6E1gm TIL Keiko, the male orca who portrayed Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy was eventually freed in Iceland but did not fully adapt to the wilderness and shortly after died in Norway.
d8ppK TIL that in 1964 Reg Spiers, an australian athlete, shipped himself from London to Australia in a box, because he had no money to pay for a plane ticket to come back home for his daugter's birthday.
64PQ TIL 3 people were hanged for the 1660 murder of William Harrison in the year 1661. In 1662, William Harrison returned on a ship after escaping slavery, having been kidnapped by pirates. This lead to the “no body, no murder” rule.