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TIL that bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie ran for president in 1964. Though it started as a joke, he kept it up in part because proceeds from his campaign merchandise went to CORE, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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oRnMK TIL Proximity fuses were invented jointly by UK & US in WW II. A secret guarded to a similar level as the atom bomb project, and for years not fired on Germans for fear of them figuring it out. It allowed UK anti-V1 artillery to go from 17% to 74% effective. Julius Rosenberg was able to steal one.
jBYj TIL prior to WWII a Viennese psychiatrist organized a special counseling program which for the first time in years lead to zero student suicides. Later imprisoned in Nazi camps, his family murdered, he wrote in secret a book about the meaning of life which became a bestseller after his liberation
JryQ TIL China had the equivalent of a Hurricane Katrina every month for 100 years. This totally destabilized the country, and helps explain how one of the largest most sophisticated states in the world collapsed so quickly. They are still recovering from these ecological disasters today.
dAl9 TIL Jean-Claude Van Damme’s first screen credit is listed as “Gay Karate Man”.
G8Z4 TIL the first version of Eminem’s song “My Name Is” contained the line “My English teacher wanted to have sex in junior high The only problem was, my English teacher was a guy”, which was changed to “My English teacher wanted to flunk me in junior high Thanks a lot, next semester I’ll be 35”