› added 8 years ago

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TIL in 1959, a group attempting to find the path used by Hannibal’s army to cross the Alps and invade Roman Italy successfully traversed the Alps from France to Italy with an 11yr old former circus elephant named Jumbo.

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mxMbP TIL when Renault was planning to release a model called Zoe, a woman named Zoe Renault sued the company to make them change the car's name. However, the court allowed Renault to release the Zoe, which has become the all-time top selling electric car in the French market.
VMOOp TIL in 2006 muggers accosted magician David Copperfield, who promptly turned all of his pockets empty despite carrying his wallet, cell phone and passport
d8Za8 TIL tug-of-war used to be an Olympic sport. In the 1912 Olympics in Sweden, the host nation took gold, Great Britain took silver, and no one won bronze because only two teams showed up.
yV0l8 TIL that in the days of sailing ships cannibalism among shipwrecked sailors was openly acknowledged, and castaways often admitted to drawing lots to decide who would live and who die. This was called a "custom of the sea" excused because of the dire necessity
WkEnY TIL of a form of debugging called rubber duck debugging, where you debug code by explaining it. The name is in reference to the book "The Pragmatic Programmer" where a programmer would debug code by explaining it, word by word, to his rubber duck.