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TIL Louis XIV had an elephant at Versailles, a gift from Portugal's king in 1668. The animal became part of the Ménagerie, the palace's zoo, and was fed 80 pounds of bread, 12 pints of wine, and two buckets of soup daily. It is the only African elephant recorded in Europe between 1483 and 1862.

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xVY65 TIL Consumer Reports was blacklisted by McCarthy from 1945-1954 as a Communist organization for reporting on serious life-threatening product flaws and advocating for fair treatment of workers
8a7J4 TIL the small town of Whittier, Alaska has nearly all of its residents living in one large building. This building (Begich) includes stores, a church, a police station, city offices, a clinic, and more. Kids get to school across the street via an underground tunnel.
pYRnG TIL In 2001, an Australian hacker using a laptop and a radio transmitter took control of a local sewage system in Queensland and sent municipal sewage into parks, rivers and public lands. He did this out of revenge against the department that had opposed his hiring request.
GYwyJ TIL that defibrillators work quite differently than in movies. Its actually used to stop the heart from fibrillating (hence the name defibrillator) The electric shock momentarily paralyzes the heart so that a synchronized rhythm can be restored.
KYEVJ TIL about the Phoebus Cartel, an oligopoly that carved up the early light bulb market for profit and to reduce the operating life of light bulbs from about 2,500 hours to under 1,000 hours to force people to buy more bulbs. It’s an early example of planned obsolescence to drive profits.