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TIL that in its early days, football was primarily played in colleges and was extremely violent due to the rugby style nature of the rules. It was so violent that in 1905 alone, there were 19 fatalities that US President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to shut down the sport unless changes were made.

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mxVMp TIL Werner Herzog once promised fellow documentary maker Errol Morris that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever finished his movie on pet cemeteries, because he found Morris to be incapable of ever finishing his projects. In 1978 Morris finished his film, and Herzog publicly cooked and ate his shoe.
4kbe5 TIL when Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858-1889) was six, he received water treatment, waking up with pistol shots, nocturnal exposure in the zoo as well as hours of exercise as part of his military education. This abuse was likely a contributing factor in his later suicide.
awGY0 TIL that according to Maori legend New Zealanders were prey to giant eagles; Haast Eagles, which could catch prey up to 510 lbs and had a wingspan up to 9.8 ft, went extinct around 1400.
d8LL7 TIL Lego Mindstorms was named after Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, a book arguing the benefits of teaching computer literacy in primary and secondary education written by Seymour Papert, an AI pioneer and the co-creator of Turtle graphics and the LOGO programming language
AN5vn TIL that in 1487 a ten-year-old boy, Lambert Simnel, was crowned “King Edward VI” in Dublin by Yorkist rebels. Henry VII defeated them but spared the child, making him a kitchen spit-boy and later a royal falconer. Simnel lived quietly into old age.