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TIL www.whitehouse.com used to be a porn website, resulting in many schoolchildren in the late 1990s accidentally seeing adult content via the website

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v8Dr TIL there used to be “party lines” for telephones, the entire neighborhood was linked to a single phone line and they had to take turns using the phone. You could listen in to your neighbors’ calls, or interrupt them telling them to get off the phone because they talk too much and you need to use it
nmOP TIL Christopher Walken worked as a lion tamer as a teenager.
EgQPW TIL that in 1941, American vessels of the Atlantic fleet fired hundreds of rounds on a light in the sky believing it to be a Japanese aircraft. It turned out to be the planet Venus.
xV8Ag TIL noble gases on the periodic table are called "noble" because they don't react or generally interact with other elements, like "noble" aristocracy.
78gkp TIL Genghis Khan’s empire would eventually become the largest contiguous land empire in history.