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TIL Jim Downey, who played the high school principal in Billy Madison, was a longtime writer on SNL. His famous “May God have mercy on your soul” speech at the end of the film was based on a speech Downey used to give to Chris Farley when Farley presented terrible ideas in the SNL writers’ room.

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GYwB1 TIL In 2014 the CDC once found a smallpox sample that they had lost and didn’t even know it. It was just laying around in some random storeroom.
Z8xoB A number so epic it will collapse your brain into a black hole! Yet Tony Padilla and Matt Parker take the risk of discussing its magnitude.
KOGpa TIL in 1936, Cleveland lost the largest book in the world. The 'Golden Book of Cleveland' was 7 feet by 5 feet and 3 feet thick, with 6,000 pages — nearly the size of a queen-size bed. It weighed roughly 2.5 tons.
P17EO TIL that a women's suffrage activist named Virginia Minor sued in court in the 1870s to secure women the right to vote, based on the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause. In 1875, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled against her in the Minor v. Happersett case.
E1gJP TIL A French WW1 air force squadron composed of American volunteer pilots, named the Lafayette Escadrille, had two lion cubs as their mascots named ‘Whiskey’ and ‘Soda’