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TIL the longest and most contentious election for the speaker of the U.S House of Representatives occurred during its 34th Congress (1855-1857). It lasted two months, took 133 ballots, and necessitated a rule change allowing for a simple plurality of members to select the speaker.

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aeEb TIL that because of a court ruling, any movie made prior to 1953 is public domain in Japan, including many Disney movies such as Song of the South, Fantasia, Snow White, Bambi, and Cinderella. You can tape them, sell it, and legally pocket any money you make.
4k9pJ TIL Aristotle wrote the heart has only three chambers, and that tiny organisms can be generated spontaneously out of inanimate matter. It is now known that the left atrium is very difficult to observe and took Louis Pasteur to prove that growth doesn't happen in a container without micro-organisms
oRR1E TIL Brian O'Leary wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the physical properties of the Martian surface and was selected as a scientist-astronaut by NASA in 1967 for a potential manned Mars mission when it was still in NASA's program plan
78ZbP TIL Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock and Roll was released in 1978, which means he was singing about music that was ~20 years old. That’s like a song today saying The White Stripes and Modest Mouse were the pinnacle of music.
rRdr1 TIL when Elvis Presley's debut single was first played on the local radio station, he was invited for an on-air interview. The DJ asked Elvis which high school he attended: a roundabout way of informing the audience of his race without actually asking the question