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TIL that Peter Butterworth (1915-1979), a British comedy actor, failed his audition for the 1950 movie The Wooden Horse because he "didn't look convincingly heroic or athletic enough". However, he was a POW in Stalag Luft III and actually helped in the real escape that the film/book was based on.

Y7Z1P TIL there are incinerating toilets that burn human feces. The excrement is collected in a pan and incinerated, reducing it to pathogen-free ash
LkO8Z TIL Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography was sold by 10,000 agents, many of whom were former Union soldiers who canvassed the northern states while wearing their old uniforms. It was a method devised by Mark Twain, the publisher. It made a fortune for Grant's widow, who received a 75% royalty.
p8mDN TIL - A study performed at the University of Plymouth wanted to test the claim that an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters would create the works Shakespeare. They got funding for six monkeys for one month. They produced five pages of text which consisted mainly of the letter "s".
jNZxn TIL that Ulysses S. Grant provided the defeated and starving Confederate Army with food rations after their surrender in April, 1865. Because of this, for the rest of his life, Robert E. Lee "would not tolerate an unkind word about Grant in his presence."
v7QD TIL widespread date-rape drink spiking is an ‘urban legend’ and has been debunked by academic research, showing the majority of those claiming to have had their drink spiked simply consumed too much alcohol