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TIL that during WWII, the US government made a propaganda cartoon for the army called Private Snafu, written by Dr. Seuss. One episode was never released because Seuss's script, purely by coincidence, described a fictitious secret weapon very similar to the atomic bombs later dropped on Japan.

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4KNX TIL Griffith created the WikiScanner in August 2007, which cross-references IP addresses, company IP address ownership, and content edits. WikiScanner located violators of Wikipedia rules, such as the Vatican, Wal-Mart, FBI, CIA, Church of Scientology, Exxon, Microsoft, Apple, and the UN.
OoL77 TIL rat-baiting was a common sport in 19th-century England. Occasionally desperate men would compete against dogs to see who could kill the most rats, some of the more successful becoming minor celebrities.
KOpE6 TIL that King Louis XVI was condemned to death by a majority of only 1 vote. Amongst those who voted in favor of the execution was the king's own cousin, Philippe Égalité, whom the king did not have positive relations with. Philippe himself would be guillotined on the same scaffold a year later.
dDWDB TIL that Embalming wasn't commonly used in US funerals until the US Civil War, when morticians followed after both armies selling their services for embalming and shipping, and several prominent Civil War figures were embalmed and displayed, including Abraham Lincoln.
LkmoZ TIL Mao Zedong is recorded as telling a comrade that "I eat a lot and I excrete a lot"