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TIL that 18th century France developed a visual telegraph system. Using a series of towers topped with adjustable beams that would display a message and instructions on the next tower to relay it to, messages could be sent across the country in a mere matter of hours, long before electricity.

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jAYM TIL that high-fiber diets work to lower your cholesterol in a roundabout way: by interfering with bile absorption in the intestines. Because the bile can’t get absorbed as well, the bile gets flushed out with your poop, and so the body makes more bile salts, using cholesterol as fuel.
epVvb TIL As a child, Walt Disney's mom convinced his dad, Elias, to buy him a set of colored pencils and some drawing paper. Elias did not approve, believing the boy should spend time engaged in hard, manual labor. Even after Walt became famous, Elias never considered animation a real job
EgRYo TIL an actor in Nazi Germany was fired for being Jewish. He grew a beard, dyed all his hair by bathing in diluted hydrogen and returned to the stage claiming to be a self-taught actor. He was praised by the Nazis as "proof of the superiority of Aryan blood."
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