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TIL Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's younger sister, almost married future Canadian prime minister John Turner. "It was “instant attraction … fairy tale stuff” with the young bachelor-lawyer and there were rumours about a “secret visit” to London and an order from the Queen to stop seeing him

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b6ky7 TIL that about 30 scientists and staff of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station starved to death guarding the institute's edible seeds and plants during the siege of Leningrad
4XMAg TIL that introverts tend to have larger, thicker gray matter in their prefrontal cortex — a region of the brain that is linked to abstract thought and decision-making — while extroverts have less gray matter (2012 study by Randy Buckner of Harvard University)
Br9ee TIL the Culinary Institute of America was founded by two women, Frances L. Roth and Katherine Angell, in 1946. They created the school to compensate for the shortage of European chefs coming to the US due to WWII. Their goal was to train a new generation of American chefs to fill these roles.
GYRW1 TIL the world's first emergency phone number was launched in London in 1937. It initially only covered a radius of 12 miles. The 999 number was chosen due to the ease of dialing it on phones at that time.
E14wx TIL I learned of Grandma Gatewood who hiked the 2,200 mile Appalachian trail at 55 bringing only Converse shoes, an army blanket and a plastic shower curtain after reading about it in a magazine and telling her children she was going for a walk. She hiked it again at 72 and 75.