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TIL the ancient Chinese used natural gas for lighting purposes around 500 B.C., using bamboo pipelines to transport the gas for miles.

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LQLXZ TIL the black bears in California's San Gabriel Valley were shipped here from Yellowstone in the 1930s, when they were retired from entertaining visitors by eating garbage in arenas.
jNrKp TIL Rockstar Games thought it was so important to include the song "Walk The Night" in GTA IV, that they hired a private investigator to look up the relatives of Delaney (who died in 2003) so they could find whoever holds the rights of the song now in order to make a licensing deal.
rNAZe TIL Alex Trebek nearly became a priest. In college, Trebek considered becoming a priest and went so far as to spend a summer at a Trappist monastery. But it was the vow of silence that changed his mind. He later said, “I’m not one to keep my big mouth shut.”
dD81E TIL In the Atacama Desert in Chile, there is a 11 meter (36 ft) tall hand sculpture, called Mano del Desierto. It was created by Mario Irarrázabal to represent the injustice within Chile in the past.
YpLAP TIL the term "silhouette" has a political backstory. King Louis XV's General of Finances, Étienne de Silhouette, had a reputation for being cheap. Shadow portraits became popular during his tenure and got named after him due to being very cheap to make compared to commissioning a painting of oneself