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TIL in 1982 Key West seceded from the US as a protest against their actions. Then they declared war and surrendered after 1 minute, but in 1995 they attacked the US by firing water cannons from fireboats and hitting people with stale Cuban bread. They are today known as the “Conch Republic.”

pY0AQ TIL: Since 2005, when the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act took effect, any citizen can opt out of receiving credit card solicitations by mail permanently. However, there is no option to do it online, you must buy a stamp and mail a physical form.
4ZNa TIL that the Paraguayan War was the bloodiest war in Latin American history. Paraguay lost nearly 70% of their male population. After the war, some surviving men began to practice polygamy due to the gender disparity in an attempt to recover the population.
v1vL8 TIL in 1968 over 6,000 sheep died in Utah after a mishap at a chemical weapons test range some 50 miles away. A cannister aboard a spray plane malfunctioned, dispersing the gas to a height of 1,400 ft instead of the intended 150 ft.
pYBwN TIL Pixar renders its animated movies with one of the top 25 supercomputers in the world; with all that power, it still took 2 years of processing to render every frame of Monsters University.
7r55M TIL the phrase "splice the mainbrace" was originally an order given on naval vessels describing a tedious and critically important emergency repair, but eventually it became a euphemistic order for giving an extra serving of grog or rum to sailors.