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TIL that King Abdullah of Jordan once appeared on Star Trek: Voyager

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LQgZd TIL Nina Simone’s song Mississippi Goddam was written in response to a Baptist church bombing in 1963. This song was used as an anthem for the civil rights movement in a time when music was heavily censored
l70Zr TIL in 2007 an FBI agent posing as AP reporter sent a fake article link to a 15 y/o suspected of bomb threats. A tracking tool revealed his location and helped the agents confirm his identity. This later resulted to lawsuits by the press against the FBI and led to a $145k settlement in 2014
6EEam TIL the foot-measuring tool ("Brannock Device") used by shoe stores was invented by Charles Brannock in 1927. He was advised to make it out of plastic so regular replacements would be needed, but he insisted on steel. Today, most Brannock Devices survive 10-15 years of daily use before wearing out.
dDnX8 TIL the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, has a dedicated team of people called the "String Similarity Panel" to check if applications for new "generic top-level domains" (gTLDs, e.g.: .com, .org, .net) are similar to existing top-level domains (TLDs).
1abR7 TIL while the brain represents just 2% of a person’s total body weight, it accounts for 20% of the body’s energy use; the bulk of a brain’s energy consumption is put toward sustaining alertness and monitoring the environment for important information