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TIL Abraham Lincoln, prior to becoming President, was an avid boater and traveled on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers where his boat often got stuck on sandbars. In 1849 Lincoln invented a method for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals, making him the first and only U.S. President to receive a patent.

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9nNp TIL that Under Armour, an American company, uses a non-American spelling of “armour” (with a “u”) not because it has ties to somewhere like the UK or Canada but because the founder was “trying to get a cool toll-free phone number.”
oBXEr TIL Jack Black desperately wanted to use a Led Zeppelin song in School Of Rock but the band was notoriously reluctant to let their music be used in films. The director suggested having Black record a personal plea to the band members, in front of a crowd of 1,000 extras. It worked.
XEkLk TIL that in the city of Iruma, Japan keeps track of their elderly citizen who have dementia by having placing a waterproof QR sticker on their fingernails or toenails
ejW5 TIL that “muskeg”, very damp soil, is why northern Ontario is almost uninhabited. Sometimes 100 feet deep or more, unless completely cleared it freezes and buckles construction in winter, and swallows anything left (locomotives, construction equipment, moose, etc.) when it thaws in the spring.
l7LNB TIL Poland's cities of Warsaw and Poznan utilize teams of live mollusks to detect impurities in drinking water at 50 discrete water treatment plants. When 4 or more mussels are detected to have closed (using magnetic sensors) the water supply shuts off.