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TIL that pencils are yellow because in the 19th century, the best graphite came from China. Because yellow was a royal colour in China, pencil companies began to colour their pencils yellow to show both high quality and an association with China.

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JVmm TIL Lyndon Johnson liked to scare visitors to his ranch by driving his amphibious car downhill into a lake while shouting “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!”
JYyjk TIL: Quaker Oats fed radioactive milk and oatmeal to unsuspecting special needs kids under the guise of a science club in order to find out how beneficial certain nutrients were in their oats.
Wkv74 TIL of the "Tumi" scalpel, believed to be the oldest surgical instrument to exist (8000 BC). It was used for trepanation, the art of drilling a hole into the skull. By opening the skull, tribes believed that it would allow the demons that caused headaches, melancholy or epilepsy to escape the body.
4XpMR TIL journalist Sara Bongiorni and her family tried to live without Chinese made goods for a year and found it almost impossible
ADAb7 TIL that the foreskin of Jesus Christ is a christian relic. Known as the Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin, it was claimed to have miraculous powers attributed to it. Up to 18 different foreskins were claimed to be the Holy Prepuce in various European towns.