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TIL 'The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World' is a secret society that still exists today. It was established by two African-American men in 1899 after they were denied entry into 'The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World' due to their race.

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Y7Rkr TIL that Linda, a widely used synchronization model for parallel computation, employed in both academia and industry, is named after Linda Lovelace, a porn actress who appeared in the iconic 70s porn film "Deep Throat"
W7RQ9 TIL about the most prolific art smuggler in US law enforcement history, Subhash Kapoor. The true extent of loot taken from countries around the world is unknown but one of the statues stolen from India went for 5 million dollars -- sold to the National Gallery of Australia.
YMeZ TIL Ralph Lawrence Carr, Governor of Colorado, spoke out against the internment of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, costing him his political career
8awya TIL the actor originally cast as Charlie in Charlie's Angels was drunk and couldn't record his lines. The show's creator called John Forsythe last minute, he recorded the lines for the first episode in the middle of the night, then went back to bed. He kept that role for 5 years.
x7wk TIL: The astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil failed to measure the transit of Venus in 1761, waited 8 years in Africa to try again, failed because of bad weather, and then came home to find that his relatives had declared him dead and plundered his estate.