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TIL The USA's National Broadcasting Company (NBC) helped fund a tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall in 1962

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ep7Yb TIL in 1613, a Japanese daimyo sent an embassy to Rome, crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and visiting the Philippines, Mexico, and Spain along the way
Ypdg7 TIL Jim Varney studied Shakespeare professionally at the Barter Theater in Virginia before winning a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series for his role as Ernest P. Worrell in Hey Vern, It's Ernest!.
PYDlw TIL There were lots of sketchy criticality accidents during the Manhattan Project and other early nuclear weapons research. E.g. One scientist died after dropping a Tungsten Carbide brick onto a Plutonium sphere which reflected more neutrons back onto it increasing the radiation
pyNO TIL that a US Army Special Forces officer killed in 2006, unmarried, with financially independent family, had willed his Serviceman’s Group Life Insurance policy benefits to the men of his unit, so that they could throw a party in his honor in Vegas should he be killed in action.
MeVOW TIL of the "Monkey Love Experiments" where infant monkeys were housed with two artificial mothers: one, made only of wire, dispensed food, while the other had no food but was made of soft terrycloth. The monkeys spent nearly all of their time clinging to the soft mother despite the lack of food.