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TIL in 1937 the soviets discovered that Samuel Dickstein, a prominent NY congressman, was running a criminal business of selling illegal US passports. He got on the soviet payroll for $1,250 a month($27k today) with the codename "crook", refering to his greediness. Nobody found out until the 90's

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vPM7x TIL that Simon Helberg (Howard Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory) guest-starred on the Friends spin-off Joey as an engineering student at Caltech – essentially a prototype of the Howard Wolowitz character
n0a9 TIL that Japanese paratroopers in WWII had rifles that folded in half. They quickly discovered that these modifications didn’t work too well.
6LnY TIL in 1975, Queen’s manager, John Reid, played “Bohemian Rhapsody” for Elton John (another one of his clients) prior to its release. Elton retorted, “Are you mad? You’ll never get that on the radio!”. The song eventually reached #1, and Elton covered it at Freddie Mercury’s tribute concert in 1992.
GYooJ TIL of a man who retired at 61 and becames a perpetual hiker. Over 15 years he walked over 34,000 miles (55,000 KM). He became the first known person to hike the entire Appalachian Range in North America, from Newfoundland to the Keys and more and more.
VMnPm TIL Tesla's space travelling Roadster passed Mars, Mercury and Venus in 2018. It's estimated that the Roadster will continue in its elliptical orbit until coming close enough to Earth in 2091 to be seeable by a telescope. It might then crash into Earth millions of years in the future.