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TIL in 1861, the King of Siam offered a pair of elephants as a gift to America "to be let loose to increase and multiply in the continent of America". Lincoln sent a letter declining the gift, as elephants would be useless in Industrial America, and they likely would not survive anyway.

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QJYga TIL that the buttoning of women's garments on the left side arises from historically placing buttons for the convenience of (right-handed) maids/servants who would dress them
eNDL TIL: a neuroscientist studying the brains of psychopathic killers scanned his own brain as a control, only to discover that he himself was a psychopath. When he told friends and family, the universal response was, “That explains a lot.”
VMLYB TIL in the 1920's newly hired engineers at General Electric would be told, as a joke, to develop a frosted lightbulb. The experienced engineers believed this to be impossible. In 1925, newly hired Marvin Pipkin got the assignment not realizing it was a joke and succeeded.
v14M7 TIL that under apartheid the Taiwanese, Koreans, and Japanese were classified as "honorary whites" while the Chinese were classified as "colored"
o5aL TIL Cockroaches are so repulsed by humans that if they’re touched by a human, not only do they run away, but they wash themselves.