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TIL On March 1526 King Francis of France, then a POW to his cousin, Charles V, signed a treaty securing his release in exchange for ceding territories. Shortly after Francis safely returned to Paris, the royal council annuled the treaty, claiming it was invalid since Francis signed it under duress

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69wr7 TIL that on 10 December 1901, Wilhelm Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering X-rays. He refused to give a Nobel lecture, refused to patent the discovery, and even refused to name the rays after himself - yet many countries still call X-rays Röntgenstrahlen.
wnEY TIL Steven Spielberg declined to direct the Harry Potter movies and said “It’s just like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts. There’s no challenge.”
VBGxp TIL the movie 'Die Hard' was Alan Rickman's first role in a feature film. Rickman later revealed that he almost turned down the role because he did not think Die Hard was the kind of film he wanted to make
4XDkX TIL about William Sidney "Sid" Hatfield (May 15, 1891– August 1, 1921), Police Chief of Matewan, WV, Labor hero, and staunch supporter of the United Mine Workers of America. He became a local celebrity after defending strikers against the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency during The Battle of Matewan.
rRaBw TIL that Ramanujan's lost notebook, discovered 56 years after his death, contained the mock theta functions that have been found to be useful for calculating the entropy of black holes. The unordered sheets contained over six hundred mathematical formulas listed consecutively without proofs.