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TIL in 1943 300 extermination camp prisoners escaped after assassinating over 12 SS officers

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6xQ8 TIL that the Voyager 2 carried a tape recorder whose reels rotated at high speeds which caused issues with its operations. Due to the conservation of angular momentum, the space probe started an undesirable rotation in the opposite direction whenever the tape recorder was turned on.
DQxpv TIL: Ping-pong balls are made with celluloid, which is a byproduct of the paper-making process. Celluloid is used in ping-pong balls because it is easily molded and shaped, while allowing for the high-bounce property of the balls.
GoBN TIL that when medieval Islamic scholar al-Biruni was trying to determine the exact position of qibla (the Muslim direction for prayer), he realized that a vast span of Earth’s land was unaccounted for in the modern maps of the time. This turned out to be the American continent.
9a7p TIL in 2013 Europe was hit by a horse meat scandal, in which 300 tons of horse meat was found throughout the EU food supply labeled as beef. The source was traced to a Romanian slaughterhouse, who sold it as horse meat to a chain of Cyprus, Dutch, and Irish resellers who mislabeled it.
B6ld TIL that U.S. Federal Affirmative Action regulations specify that minority status cannot supersede merit in hiring decisions, and “(q)uotas are expressly forbidden.”