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TIL in 1861 the balloon Enterprise flew 500 feet above the White House and its pilot transmitted a message to Abraham Lincoln via telegraph.

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6aOW TIL In the 80s, Weird Al turned down $5 million dollars to promote a beer brand, since a lot of his fans were “young and impressionable.”
4XPgb TIL A mathematician named Nicolas Bourbaki who has made many strides in mathematics, never even was a real person, but was a collective pseudonym for a group of mathematicians who wrote their own textbooks
WAMd TIL Edgar Allan Poe’s cause of death is a mystery. A few nights before he ultimately died he was found wandering incoherently, wearing clothes that were not his own and calling out the name “Reynolds.”
mxgAo TIL Meriwether Lewis was the first naturalist to encounter grizzly bears firsthand. His terrifying accounts became the new standard scientific description of the species. Naturalist George Ord used these firsthand descriptions to name the bear *Ursus horribilis Ord meaning Ord's horrible bear
9wKnD TIL In 1960, Tonight Show host Jack Paar resigned and walked off mid-broadcast after a joke about toilets was censored. He changed his mind and returned three weeks later on the condition that he could tell the joke.