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TIL that while George Orwell's Room 101 has become a euphemism for torture, the other great anti-totalitarian novel of the 1940ies, Darkness At Noon (1940), had its protagonist trapped in cell... 404.

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bZpa TIL teleportation was used in Star Trek because the budget didn’t allow for expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets
rkXy TIL German was the second most widely spoken language in the USA, until it was forcibly suppressed during WWI. The declaration of Independence in 1776 was even published in German first and only published in English a day later.
Y7Rkr TIL that Linda, a widely used synchronization model for parallel computation, employed in both academia and industry, is named after Linda Lovelace, a porn actress who appeared in the iconic 70s porn film "Deep Throat"
wol8 TIL 1970’s NASA Scientists believed that we would have giant cylindrical space stations… Just Like Halo…
GoP4 TIL that Weird Al Yankovic is a vegan, and when asked how he can justify playing at the Great American Rib Cookoff, he responded “The same way I can rationalize playing at a college even though I’m not a student anymore.”