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TIL that from 1334 to 1827 graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were required to swear an oath that they would not lecture outside these two English universities, as a consequence there were no new universities established in England until Durham University became England's third university in 1832.

P15mV TIL that Robert Stack of Unsolved Mysteries fame was a world record holding skeet shooter. Here he is talking about it at the Olympics with Arthur Ashe
awa09 TIL The Lord of the Rings films originally would have been released by Disney via Miramax but they chose not to fund it due to costs. They let New Line Cinema have it on the condition they pay $10M in "turnaround" costs. The LOTR trilogy will later on gross over $2.9B at the global box office.
8aZkZ TIL staghorn ferns exhibit behaviors which are similar to ant and bee colonies (e.g. division of labor and cooperative survival). This phenomenon, known as eusociality, marks a major evolutionary transition for complex lifeforms and has previously only been observed in animals and insects.
X0jv6 TIL the 2nd-century BC Venus de Milo statue was discovered in 1820 by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos while working his fields. A French naval officer saw its value and arranged the acquisition. The statue was given to King Louis XVIII, who donated it to the Louvre, where it remains today
Wed TIL the opposite of “Ambidextrous” is “Ambisinister”: Literally ‘having two left hands’