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TIL John Jacob Astor arrived in New York City with a suitcase full of flutes to start a music store. A few years later he one of the richest Americans ever. He made his fortune in furs and real estate.

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joQM TIL the potato chip was believed to have originated in 1853 when a chef had his fried potatoes sent back by an annoyed customer multiple times because the potatoes were “too thick”. He was fed up, cut the potatoes razor thin, and put extra salt on them. The customer, to his surprise, loved it.
xVAR5 TIL prior to China being unified as an empire in 221 BC, there was the Warring States period, in which 7 independent states were in a more or less permanent state of war for about 250 years.
b9jep TIL: That the Latin word for intoxicated is crapulence.
N7jre TIL: Ironically, the doctrine of papal infallibility (the pope officially has singular absolute final say on matters of church doctrine) dates only to 1870, around the time when the papacy permanently lost all its remaining temporal political power.
ejRL TIL that NASA has one Hubble Telescope pointed at space. The CIA has 15 of them pointed at Earth.