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TIL: Australia is wider than the moon.

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R5pY9 TIL Leon Trotsky was the only notable absentee from Vladimir Lenin's funeral, which attended by tens of thousands despite the freezing, snowy weather in Moscow in late January. His claim that he was given the wrong date for the funeral turned out to be true. Stalin did so, on purpose
p8eap TIL The United States used chemical weapons on the Vietnam War. It is estimated that today up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems as a result of contamination
ANJ1n TIL In 1869 Cyrus Teed claimed to have been visited by a spirit telling him he was the Messiah after shocking himself. He then took on the name "Koresh" and created a religious commune for followers of "Koreshanity" in a small Florida town which was supposed to become "new Jerusalem".
1ewO TIL one of mathematician John von Neumann’s lecturers said “Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he’d come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper.”
ZQVp TIL of the saluting trap. British army conscripts would form a large group, then one by one walk to an officer. Each would salute, forcing him to salute back. The goal was to force the officer to salute as many soldiers as possible as fast as possible to make his arm sore.