› added 5 years ago

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TIL that the Lorem Ipsum template is a more than 2000 years old patchy copy of emperor Cicero's philosophical reflections on pain and pleasure (and that this was only (re)discovered in 1994).

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ZpAb4 TIL that when Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, hospital staff cut away his clothing. Finding a laminated card in his suit pocket, they discarded it into his shoe on the floor where it was left unattended. That card was the list of nuclear launch codes.
ne1MP TIL George Lucas didn’t want Harrison Ford to play Indiana Jones because he didn’t want them to become known as a pair like DeNiro and Scorsese. Lucas and Spielberg thought Tom Selleck was perfect for the part but he had already filmed the pilot “Magnum P.I.” and couldn’t get out of the contract
xVPeb TIL in the US radio-controlled clocks precisely coordinate time shifts with the official atomic clock at the Physical Measurement Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The atomic clock keeps time for the entire country and will neither gain or lose a second over the course of 100 million years.
b6PPj TIL: The only country who has successfully invoked NATO Article 5 is the USA after the attacks on September 11.
b9NE4 TIL that the early 19th-century American interpretation of Santa Claus was part of a movement to tone down the wild Christmas celebrations of the era, which included aggressive home invasions under the guise of wassailing (caroling), substantial premarital sex, and public displays of sexual deviancy