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TIL that during the Vietnam War, U.S. forces faked a vampire attack to scare Viet Cong soldiers by draining a corpse’s blood and leaving puncture wounds to exploit local vampire folklore.

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DNeY TIL Scientists have found that smiling men are less attractive to women because they may be judged to be more feminine and less dominant. However, men find smiling women more attractive.
W7LD8 TIL that France and Spain "went to war" over a few stop signs in the 1970s and 1980s when France built two new roads that crossed a Spanish road and installed new stop signs which Spanish citizens continually removed over and over again for years. This became known as the "War of the Stop Signs".
OoglY TIL that longer basketball shorts became a thing when Michael Jordan asked Champion, the maker of NBA uniforms, to make longer shorts so he could grab onto them when he hunched over out of breath.
rKrd TIL Japan and the Soviet Union fought a major battle in Mongolia in 1939. The Japanese defeat convinced them to maintain a truce with the USSR during most of WW2
WrJ4 TIL Indigenous South Americans had advanced metallurgy and worked platinum with sintering method prior to contact with the European settlers. Platinum has a melting point of 3218 F. Europeans were unable to work platinum until the 19th century.