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TIL that Adolf Hitler scribbled a prototype for a car in 1932, sitting at a restaurant table in Munich, which would later go on to become the immensely successful design for a car we now know as the Volkswagen Beetle.

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Vv1p TIL during WWI a British recruitment tool called the “Pals Battalion” allowed people from the same town to enter the military together. Though it increased enlistment rolls, it also devastated whole regions of the UK whenever a battalion experienced heavy casualties. By WWII the idea was abandoned.
n6Mb TIL Groups of Hermit Crabs will sometimes form “Vacancy Chains” around empty large shells that they themselves are too small to fit into. Once a large enough crab comes to occupy the big shell it initiates a mass swap of shells so that all crabs in the chain can get an upgrade.
OGJ5R TIL In Rastafari, "Zion" stands for a utopian place of unity, peace and freedom, as opposed to "Babylon", the oppressing and exploiting system of the materialistic modern world and a place of evil.
YLDG TIL the original Super Mario Bros 2 game was too hard and unpopular overseas, so Nintendo redeveloped an existing Japanese game (Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic) and turned it into what we know as Super Mario Bros 2, hence the weird, new characters and game play.
0dyLM TIL of the great auk, a penguin-like bird that roamed the North Atlantic until it went extinct in the mid-19th century. One of the last known members of the species was killed by a group of Scotsmen who believed it to be a witch.