› added 5 months ago

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TIL about Coagula, DC Comics' first transgender superhero; she was introduced in a 1993 story ("The Laughing Game") where she defeats The Codpiece, a spurned-man-turned-villain with a multifunctional mechanical codpiece.

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via reddit.com

MexY0 TIL the dog breed, Leonberger were used a lot in both World Wars in and around Germany. So many of the dogs were abandoned or killed in action due to invasions that every currently living Leonberger can be traced back to only 8 that remained from WWII.
69N4W TIL Arthur Ashe published a three-volume book in 1988 titled A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete. He worked with researchers for nearly six years on the book and later stated that the book meant more to him than any of his tennis titles.
mgwp TIL that a soft drink company made a soda containing lithium called “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda”. Later, the company changed the name to the much simpler “7up” after Lithium’s atomic mass.
ne697 TIL that in the 1940s, actress Joan Hickson appeared in an Agatha Christie play, following which the author sent her a note reading “I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple. 41 years later, Hickson was cast as Miss Marple in a BBC series of Marple adaptations.
brZp TIL that George Lucas was so sure that Close Encounters of the Third Kind would out perform Star Wars at the box office that he proposed to Steven Spielberg that they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other’s films. To this day Spielberg receives 2.5% of the profits from Star Wars.