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TIL Taito (the company behind Space Invaders) originally produced peanut vending machines and vodka when it was founded as Taito Trading Company in the early 1950's.

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8adBa TIL the CIA paid magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a spy manual of trickery and deception as part of the top-secret MKUltra project, a CIA program that investigated mind control. Mulholland’s 1953 guide was supposed to be destroyed in the 1970s but an archived copy reappeared decades later.
6ngY TIL that American company MegaBots challenged Japanese manufacturer Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a giant mech fight. Suidobashi accepted, saying “Giant robots are Japanese culture. Yeah, I’ll fight. Absolutely.”
GA1M5 TIL that 6 year old Seryozha Aleshkov was the youngest soldier of WW2. The war orphaned him and then a group of soldiers took him in as a brother. He then went on to find German spies hiding in a haystack and was awarded for his intelligence. He died in 1990, aged 54. More information below.
J17Yv TIL that radio broadcasting began in university physics and engineering departments
6EaP7 TIL Garlic was called Russian penicillin during World War II because, after running out of antibiotics, the Russian government turned to this ancient treatment for its soldiers.