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TIL Muriel the goat in George Orwell's Animal Farm is inspired by his real life pet goat of the same name.

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nemaG TIL during the Vietnam War, the U.S. carried out Operation Popeye, a "cloud-seeding" mission to stimulate clouds in Vietnam to increase rainfall and lengthen the monsoon season. After the operation was declassified in 1974, the United Nations banned the weaponization of weather.
mx7nY TIL that in the past few years, at the same time that the NFL's "Super Bowl" is being played, the Aquarium of the Pacific (in the Californian city of Long Beach) holds the "Otter Bowl", with the otters playing with footballs made from frozen clams
kOjJg TIL Shakespeare invented the “yo momma” joke. In his play Titus Andronicus, one of the characters, Chiron, exclaims “Thou has undone our mother” to which another character, Aaron, replies “Villain, I have done thy mother.”
WkxjA TIL the 20 most expensive license fees for New York hotdog carts are all for carts in Central Park. One man who has a cart at Fifth Avenue and East 62nd St. near the Central Park Zoo pays $289,500 every year for license.
neO4W TIL AOL and Yahoo!, which Verizon acquired for $9.2 billion in 2016, were effectively worthless by 2018.