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TIL In 1912, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo invented a chess-playing machine that could solve a king and rook vs king endgame. It didn't always deliver mate in the fewest number of moves, nor always within the 50-move rule limit but it would checkmate the opponent every time.

EAdx TIL Minecraft’s creator, Markus Persson, had severe OCD and needed everything to be placed in its own square on a grid in his mind, leading to the cubic design of the game we know today.
R5Mn7 TIL in the 2003 SpongeBob episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", Mr. Krabs is invited to join a panty raid with SpongeBob and Patrick. The episode was removed from streaming services in 2018 by Nickelodeon, Paramount+, and Amazon.
Z8QWQ TIL George Michael wrote his hit single “Careless Whisper” at 17 years old out of sheer boredom while riding the bus to work. Despite its success, he was not happy with the song and in a 2009 interview with the Big Issue, he said he was “a bit puzzled why it made such an impression on people”.
Nvx1 TIL that humans have an innate circadian rhythm of 25 hours when external cues are removed, as opposed to earth’s 24 hour days. One day on Mars is 25 hours.
aWyJ TIL Italy’s Credem Bank takes parmesan cheese from local producers in exchange for cheap loans (charging 3-5% interest, depending on quality) & a fee ensuring the cheese matures properly (2yrs) in the bank vault (cheese is sold if the loan defaults). 430,000 parmesan wheels ($200M+) are stored there