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TIL that the construction of the Sydney Opera House was a complete failure. Exceeding the budget by 1400% and using 3 times longer. (7M and 4 years)

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GYvXJ TIL that LGBT folks in China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan refer to each other as 同志 (tóngzhì), meaning "comrade"
e0Gwg TIL of the 1980 book "Michelle Remembers", which sold millions of copies and spurred the Satanic panic of that era. Oprah even had the two authors on her show and presented their accounts of satanic abuse as pure fact. The book was later discredited.
dyE8 TIL Matt Damon and Marky Mark have a pact to just go with it whenever someone mistakes one for the other.
X7Bj TIL Erwin Rommel on being condemned to death for the July 20th plot against Adolf Hitler, chose an offer of suicide and took a cyanide pill, both to protect his staff and as a ‘blood guilt’ (Sippenhaft) law meant that his family would have been punished as well, and in this way both could be spared.
NorJ TIL the 1902 Saint-Pierre Volcano eruption killed all 35,000 people in the town except one man who survived because he was the worst prisoner and lived in a solitary confinement cell.