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TIL of “The Mad Piper” Bill Millin, the only bagpiper to land on the beach in Normandy. While men fell around him, he played his pipes throughout the battle. A group of captured German snipers was asked why they hadn’t shot him. They replied that they thought he’d gone insane and felt bad for him.

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jN8JR TIL that a catholic altar boy born in Boston dropped out of school, came to Jamaica and then join an Ethiopian Zion Church which he further transformed into an international drug network. The organization was later indicted in Florida for smuggling over 100 tons of marijuana.
69GMm TIL when Australia first joined Usenet in 1983, data was stored on tape and physically sent via air mail to the University of Sydney for dissemination. This was cheaper than an international data link then.
8aax4 TIL Dendrophilia is the sexual arousal from trees.
OoW1a TIL starting in the 1920s, shoe stores commonly had fluoroscope (X-ray) machines to check the fit of feet in shoes. The last of these were banned in the late 70s due to increased awareness of health risks from radiation.
woN7W TIL Harold Williams, one of the most accomplished polyglots of all time, already new 20 languages by the time he enrolled at Berlin University, at the age of 23. When he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Times, he was able to speak to every league of nations delegate in their own language