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TIL of the Bethke brothers. Each escaped from Soviet East Berlin. Ingo floated on a mattress across a river. Holger used a bow to fire a cable across the gap, then zip-lined to safety. Then Ingo and Holger built an aircraft and flew back over the wall to rescue their third brother, Egbert.

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69Rb7 TIL a Dutch court ordered a 41-year-old man, who judges said had fathered between 550-600 children, to stop donating sperm. The court considered it “sufficiently plausible” that the children has or could have negative psychosocial consequences including problems around identity & fears of incest.
bVV9 TIL Your heart rate slows when your face touches water; it’s called the mammalian dive reflex.
olGL TIL that in China, women who remain unmarried until their late 20s are given the term “leftover women”
81LV TIL When asked what was the greatest political fact of modern times, Otto Von Bismarck (the man who unified Germany) responded that it was “the inherited and permanent fact that North America speaks English.”
epeBD TIL About Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming who became the first head of what is now known as the SIS in the UK. He had the habit of signing official documents with the letter 'C' in green ink a tradition which carried over to his successors and was the inspiration for James Bond's 'M'.