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TIL The Nazis planned a giant tank, 15 times the size of the largest tank ever. The P 1500 ‘Monster’ was like a land-going battleship: too big for road or rail (its 1500 tonne weight would destroy them), with a crew of 100+. Despite initially having Hitlers OK, the P 1500 was eventually scrapped.

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4XevR TIL Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was challenged to a duel against James Laird. Clemens' marksmanship was so dreadful that his friend, Steve Gillis, shot off the head of a small bird before Laird arrived and told him that Clemens had shot it down. Thus, Laird retreated in fear and canceled the match.
pYn9Z TIL of the Gold Sock Killer, a unidentified Floridian serial killer active only in 1973 who got his moniker for strangling his victims to death with socks; however, a gold-colored sock was only used in two murders.
Eg5Qo TIL about Genericide - where a trademark is lost because the trademarked term becomes the generic name for the item so it can't be copyrighted; this happened to "escalator" where it lost its copyright when it became the common term for any kind of moving stairs.
N7Yv8 TIL The Military Industrial Complex Created Caning to Preserve Food - Napoleon Offered Prize for New Food Preparation to Support Russian Invasion
mRjv TIL The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus was a hoax designed by the U of Conn. to test 7th graders ability to decipher fake news on the internet presented as real. They all failed. Some even maintained it was real even after confronted with the hoax, a phenomenon called belief perseverance.