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TIL that in 1918, a black man named Laurence C. Jones survived a lynching attempt from a White mob by convincing them of his passion to educate Black kids. The mob ended up collecting money for his cause.

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Y7v5W TIL Ulysses S. Grant, who was running for a third term in 1880, led on 35 ballots for the nomination. It wasn't until James G. Blaine and John Sherman shifted their supporters toward James A. Garfield that Grant subsequently lost on the 36th ballot.
b9nNN TIL that just as America entered WWII, serial bomber George Metesky informed NYPD that, as a patriot of his country, he would make no bomb threats for the duration of the war. He stayed true to his word.
nbdo TIL African-American physicist and mathematician Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s first space flight by hand. When NASA used computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify its numbers.
x6Ln5 TIL that after Terry Jones filmed the 1996 adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" with live actors, the US distributor essentially ignored it. Eventually, Jones heard that the film was being shown in 1 US cinema; when he went there, he found out that it was a pornographic cinema.
XEvBr TIL about Witness Trees. These are trees that were present during key moments in American history. They have been known to hide bullets from those events within new layers of wood and bark. To help preserve their historic relevance, a Witness Tree Protection Program was launched in 2006.