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TIL that filmmaker James Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible on March 26, 2012. He is the first person to do this in a solo descent, and is only the third person to do so ever.

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Eg4kd TIL the first traffic signal, erected in London in 1868, was powered by gas. A gas leak caused it to explode a month later.
jQEM TIL that when a British captive officer challenged french Navy officer Surcouf with the words “You French fight for money while we fight for honour”, Surcouf replied “Each of us fights for what he lacks most”.
R5dOl TIL television broadcasters sped up tapes of I Love Lucy reruns in the 1970s while using a special hardware effects unit to alter the actors' voices to their normal pitch. This effectively made more space (around 3 minutes) to run advertisements, generating more revenue for the stations.
1RYO TIL Harvard once Expelled Ten Students for Being Gay in a Secret Kangaroo Court until Being Revealed in 2002
e0ken TIL of the 'Ill Week' - a kind of late medieval version of the Purge. When Elizabeth I died there was a popular belief that the laws of a kingdom were suspended between the death of a sovereign and the proclamation of the successor.