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TIL - That reindeer aren’t native to Alaska. Sheldon Jackson purchased them from Siberia to help with the food shortages in the late 1800s. He brought in 16 and by the late 1930s there were 640,000.

Read more reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu

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4XWGb TIL about Maximilian I, the younger brother of Franz- Josef, the only Hapsburg monarch of Mexico. During the Franco-Mexican war, Napoleon III gave Maximilian a huge chunk of Mexico in 1864 and Maximilian made a lot of liberal reforms at the time. He was executed 3 years later.
9Y65B TIL Several computer algorithms have named Bobby Fischer the best chess player in history. Years after his retirement Bobby played a grandmaster at the height of his career. He said Bobby appeared bored and effortlessly beat him 17 times in a row. "He was too good. There was no use in playing him"
8eQAP TIL that in 1859 a 2 hour telegraph conversation between Portland and Boston was able to be had without the use of any battery power. This was due to an aurora borealis generating enough electric current in the telegraph wires.
kVk7 TIL immediately after the Challenger explosion, shares of every corporation involved in the Space Shuttle dropped. But by the end of the day, most had rebounded; only Morton Thiokol remained low. This was months before the official investigation found Thiokol to be responsible for the disaster.
rxWe TIL that in 1874 a satirical article was published claiming that a women was impregnated by a bullet that plunged through the testicle of a soldier. The story persisted as a medical fact as late as 1959