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TIL the song 'Yankee Doodle' was used by British soldiers before the Revolutionary War to mock American soldiers, stereotyping them as rural simpletons who would think putting a feather in their caps would make them 'Macaroni' (i.e. cool), but was later used by Americans as an anthem of defiance.

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PmDG TIL that writing was likely only invented from scratch three times in history: in the Middle East, China, and Central America. All other alphabets and writing systems were either derived from or inspired by the the others, or were too incomplete to fully express the spoken language.
w74W TIL there was a character as popular as a meme in World War II named Kilroy. The phrase “Kilroy was here” was graffitied by soldiers across the world during the war, and nobody knows who the real original Kilroy was.
xBro TIL a 12-year Harvard research study of 78,000 women found that the ones who drank milk three times a day broke more bones than women who barely drank milk.
b6yD7 TIL in 1998 Lay's introduced fat free "WOW" chips containing a fat substitute called "Olestra." They were incredibly popular with $400 million in sales their first year. The following year sales dropped in half as Olestra caused side effects like "abdominal cramping, diarrhea, and "anal leakage"
e0nD6 TIL Willie Nelson used to smoke 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day on top of smoking marijuana. After suffering pneumonia several times, he knew he had to quit one or the other. He chose to quit tobacco.