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47

TIL Nearly three-quarters of Pennsylvania residential telephone service in 1943 was party line, with users encouraged to limit calls to five minutes (as neigjbors / other subscribers could listen to your calls).

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4a0X TIL that x represents the unknown in Algebra only because there isn’t a ‘sh’ sound in Spanish. The Arabic word شيءٌ (shay'on, literally 'something’) was originally used to denote the unknown in a math equation. It was translated to Chi (X) when the Arabs brought Algebra to Spain.
jNMpX TIL more than 150,000 indigenous Canadian people were abused in schools run by missionaries until 1996
JYyE4 TIL in The Italian Job (2003) the studio had to build custom electric Mini Coopers for the scenes in the LA subway because combustion engines would be too dangerous in the enclosed spaces.
yQ5Yp TIL The CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Artists and Had a Secret Abstract Art Collection
JP94 TIL Jeanne de Clisson, a Frenchwoman whose husband was beheaded for treason, swore revenge and sold her family lands to buy 3 warships. For the next 13 years she went on a pirating binge, targeting King Philip VI’s ships, & personally beheading French noblemen she captured with an axe.