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TIL when the French king Jean II was prisoner of the English, he was allowed to return to France to raise money for his ransom, leaving his son as a replacement hostage. When his son escaped, he voluntarily returned to England, citing reasons of “good faith and honor”.

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VBjwZ TIL Nicole Kidman has now worked with 19 female directors in eight years, after vowing to do so, because “things only change by actually being in the films of women.”
YpMNB TIL: Only in the twentieth century did humans decide that the dandelion was a weed. Before the invention of lawns, the golden blossoms and lion-toothed leaves were more likely to be praised as a bounty of food, medicine and magic. Gardeners used to weed out the grass to make room for the dandelions.
lVlV TIL of a program called SoftRAM95, claiming to double your RAM without a hardware upgrade. It sold 600,000 copies at $79.95 and did absolutely nothing.
pdkA TIL that Nazi monuments were built of special materials so they would make aesthetically pleasing ruins
VMYRm TIL that laughter is the 2nd leading cause of asthma attacks behind exercise and ahead of all of the allergens