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TIL the first vending machine was invented in Ancient Egypt in 215 BCE and sold holy water. It worked by the use of levers meaning a coin would open a tap, letting water out.

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BQrK TIL The Green Berets in Vietnam lived with and fought alongside local tribesmen called Montagnards and developed close bonds so strong that today, the biggest Montagnard population in the US is located in NC, near to the base that HQs the Green Berets.
kOPg5 TIL Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair airlines, has his own taxicab company with just one cab so he can legally use the bus lanes to avoid traffic jams
xdYB TIL that ‘Russian Ark’ is a 96-minute film shot entirely in a single, Steadicam sequence. It follows a narrator through 33 rooms in the Winter Palace, contains over 2,000 extras and 3 orchestras, and took four attempts to get right with the final take pressured by the camera’s dying battery.
J11g8 TIL that during the filming of My Left Foot (1989), Oscar winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis remained in character for the whole production. He stayed in the wheel chair for the duration of the shot and the film crew had to lift him over obstacles. They had to feed him too.
XEPBD TIL The rise of publishing by the eighteenth century led to the use of newspapers and cheap editions of popular books for cleansing after using the toilet