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TIL In 1895, workers finished the largest achromatic refractor that would ever be created: the Yerkes telescope. George Ellery Hale, an American astronomer, convinced the Chicago tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes to finance the telescope

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kR8B TIL that the Ancient Romans would piss on their clothes (or let strangers relieve themselves in a bowl and collect the urine), let it break down into ammonia, mix it with water and stir the mixture with their feet to clean their laundry.
oow8 TIL in 2006 an Australian man tried to sell New Zealand on eBay with the starting price $0.01
woGN1 TIL Cyrus Cylinder is considered one of the earliest expressions of the concept of human rights. The text contains a declaration made by Cyrus the Great and proclaims his policy of religious tolerance and repatriation of displaced peoples, particularly Jews, following his conquest of Babylon.
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