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TIL most avocados are descended from one tree grown by a Milwaukee postman in 1926

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epBDD TIL that the first-ever recorded reference to a prom was found in the 1894 journal of a male Amherst student. It recounted an invitation for a special trip to a formal dance at neighboring Smith College, which is an all-female school. "Prom" was originally short for "promenade".
78aVr TIL that from 1928-1936 Columbia Operated the Seth Low Junior College, a lower quality institution with the same entrance requirements established to keep “uncultured” (i.e. Jewish) students such as Isaac Asimov and Red Auerbach away from its main campus
W45X TIL that some Cuban cigar factories employed a “Lector” who would read newspapers, political treatises and classical literature aloud to help break the monotony of the cigar-rollers’ work, thus even illiterate cigar-rollers would be well-informed and familiar with great literature.
8a7vL TIL Pete Conrad (3rd Man on Moon) to prove a journalist wrong who thought the government told the astronauts what to say while on the moon bet her $500 dollars and said, "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me." According to him, he never got that $500.
YM6A TIL Ernst Leitz II risked his own safety by putting into place a wildly successful plan to help Jews escape Nazi Germany. He hired Jews, and then sent them on foreign assignments.