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TIL In 1949, a Spanish-language version of Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio adaptation aired in Ecuador. When listeners in the capital city of Quito learned it was fiction, the citizens rioted and burned down the radio station and news outlet, killing at least seven people.

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e07KL TIL Reagan's deterioration from Alzheimer's got so bad he once took a mini ceramic White House model out of his fish tank and when asked what he thought it was he answered, "I don't know, but it's something to do with me."
ZrpQ TIL DC police officer William West warned Ulysses S Grant, the sitting President of the United States at the time, about recklessly driving his horse-drawn carriage. The next day West saw Grant driving in the same manner and placed the POTUS under arrest. (Washington Post, NOV 7 1925)
7rBNM TIL that the Billy Joel song "She's Always a Woman" was the last song that played in the World Trade Center Plaza before the Towers' collapse on September 11, 2001
VBdkp TIL Dalai Lama is a Mongolian title. It is a combination of the Mongolic word dalai meaning "ocean" or "great" (coming from Mongolian title Dalaiyin qan or Dalaiin khan, translated as Gyatso or rgya-mtsho in Tibetan) and the Tibetan word བླ་མ་ (bla-ma) meaning "master, guru"
9YRN7 TIL After the Pope refused to allow King Henry VIII 's divorce, the King started a new church, dissolved Catholic monasteries and took over clerical properties, helping to usher in the English Reformation and the flourishing of Protestantism.