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TIL of the United States Camel Corps, a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. The Civil War interfered with the experiment and it was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.

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OGBML TIL that on February 6th, 1966, a mud dauber wasp nest caused Birgenair Flight 301, a 757 jet flying from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, to crash into the Atlantic Ocean. All 13 crew members and and 176 passengers were killed.
Xn56 TIL New Zealander Nigel Richards memorized the French Scrabble dictionary in just 9 weeks and won the French-language Scrabble World Championship despite not knowing the language.
A4OB TIL the term “outsider art”, which describes art by self-taught individuals who have little or no contact with the mainstream art world. Outsider art is often recognized for its childlike simplicity and unconventional ideas. In many cases the artists work is only discovered after their deaths.
bwr9 TIL there was an unwritten law in the circus world that giants should never allow themselves to be measured. Every circus could then maintain that they had the world’s tallest man and no one could prove otherwise.
b9mVN TIL that art thieves posing as police officers stole 13 works valued at $500 million from the the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. The stolen artwork include paintings by Rembrandt, Manet and Vermeer. The artwork hasn't been recovered, and empty frames hang in their place.