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TIL that total railroad mileage in the US peaked in 1916 at 254,251 miles or 409,177 km.

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E1ReV TIL that Americans used the Hitler Salute before Hitler
x6oyw TIL it took around 3 billion years for the very first single-celled organisms to eventually evolve into basic animal life forms. For comparison, dinosaurs were around for about 165 million years, modern humans have been around for 300,000 years.
0wwjN Are you racking up loans on unread books? There's a word for that.
lv5A TIL “lb” is descended from the Roman libra (hence the abbreviation “lb”); the name pound is a Germanic adaptation of the Latin phrase libra pondo, ‘a pound by weight’. And that’s why “pound” is abbreviated as “lb”.
ep6Lk TIL in 208 AD the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus died in what is today York while attempting to conquer Scotland.