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TIL of "Spocking Fives," where Canadians would alter five-dollar notes to make Prime Minister Laurier's features resemble Spock from Star Trek. "Spocking Fives" was so prevalent that later releases of the five-dollar note had a different image of Laurier with less resemblance to the famous Vulcan.

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noao TIL After nearly 100 years of service the M2 .50 caliber machine gun is being upgraded and replaced with the new M2A1.
woNoY TIL about ''execution of nine relations'' from china in which a criminal's spouse, kids, grandkids, parents, grandparents ,cousins, aunts and uncles, inlaws would all be killed. Usually only used in cases of treason though sometimes this was used for crimes as mundane as libel.
Wk1eA TIL, the earliest form of smallpox immunization was used in China in the 1500’s. Doctors would take ground up scabs from people with mild cases of the disease, and blow the material into their nostrils. This lead to a mild version of the disease which had a mortality rate of ~2%.(20-30%if untreated)
PYAvw TIL that Neopets was run by the Church of Scientology.
N76RP TIL John McTiernan (director of Die Hard and Predator) was sentenced to a year in prison in 2013, because on the set of his 2002 remake of Rollerball, he was illegally wiretapping producer Charles Roven, with whom he frequently clashed on set over the film's production.