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TIL The meter (metre) was originally defined to be one ten millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator through Paris

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mxXLP TIL The Japanese command didn't realize Hiroshima had been totally destroyed until almost a whole day after it happened. Vague reports of some sort of large explosion had begun to filter in, but the Japanese high command knew that no large-scale air raid had taken place over the city.
wgm1 TIL a man kayaked from Germany to Australia between 1932-1939 only to arrive and be detained as a POW due to the outbreak of WW2
nE5B TIL When the leading emergency asthma medication Albuterol’s patent expired, the patent holding pharmaceutical companies lobbied to have their own inhalers banned based on environmental issues, allowing them to file a new patent, and continue to monopolize the market.
8aaZ4 TIL Charlie Chaplin's youngest child, Christopher Chaplin, is only 55. By comparison, his oldest child, Norman Chaplin, would have been 98 this year.
5mbp TIL that in 1969, in response to one of the largest ever anti-war demonstrations, Richard Nixon wanted Army helicopters to hover over protesters and blow out their candlelit vigil