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388

TIL 14% of Americans are illiterate

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D1G4p TIL that a 10yo American Girl became penpals with a 54yo South American Dictator
AD41n TIL that the small "climbing boys" who were forced up chimneys to clean them sometimes had fires lit underneath them deliberately to encourage them to climb if they were reluctant, and would sometimes get caught in the flames and burn to death
nWEkd TIL about Gilbert Motier, a French military officer who commanded Continental Army troops in the American Revolutionary War and later played a key role in the French Revolution. His ancestor, also named Gilbert Motier, also fought England alongside Joan of Arc in 1429.
WkNP4 TIL Harvey Ball, the graphic designer who designed the yellow smiley face icon in 1963, was only paid $45 for his work. The Smiley Company, which licenses the image, made $419.9 million in 2017.
9XlX Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel had an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would only eat food that his wife prepared for him. When she had to be hospitalized for six months in 1977, he refused to eat at all and died weighing 65 pounds.