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TIL as a result of it's war with the US government during the 1970s, the Church of Scientology discovered internal documents from the CIA which proposed a mind-control experiment in which hypnotized subjects would have an uncontrollable impulse to ‘commit a nuisance’ on Groundhog Day in 1961.

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nedPb TIL Bruce Lee could deliver a blow in 5/10 of a second from a distance of one meter (and 8/10 of a second from a meter and a half). It's 1/20 of the time it takes for a person to blink. At the time the standard cameras couldn't cope with the speed of Bruce's blows. His strikes were not visible.
4XPW6 TIL Lake Tahoe at one time was named Lake Bigler in honor of the popular third governor of California. However, once it was revealed that Bigler was a Confederate sympathizer during the US Civil War, his name was removed from the lake and renamed Tahoe
Oxae TIL Big Bird was supposed to be launched into space to encourage kid’s interest in space/NASA. Instead they went with a teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who unfortunately died when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded during take off.
QJmrX TIL the character Ursula Buffay from Friends (Phoebe’s sister) actually originated on a show called Mad About You, before the show Friends came out.
d9Pj TIL of William James Sidis, a child prodigy thought to have been the smartest man who ever lived, who escaped the limelight and worked blue collar jobs, secretly writing thousands of manuscripts that have never been read.