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TIL Teófilo Stevenson, widely regarded as the greatest Olympic boxer of all time, was offered a million dollars to defect from Cuba and fight heavyweight world champion Muhammad Ali. Stevenson declined, asking "What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"

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8PPV TIL during the Battle of Iwo Jima, Hospital Corpsman John Willis was treating a fallen Marine in a mortar crater when a grenade landed at his feet. He returned the grenade, followed by 7 others thrown by the enemy in rapid succession, all while administering blood plasma. The 9th grenade killed him.
xo11 TIL George Lucas hired Harrison Ford to build cabinets in his home, saw enough in him to cast him in American Graffiti and launched his career.
XEga6 TIL of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian who rose through the ranks of the Ottoman army to become viceroy of Egypt. While viceroy, he destroyed the first Saudi state, conquered Sudan, and launched a rebellion which almost overthrew the Sultan, before being halted by European intervention.
JYd4j TIL of Aleksa Zdravkovic, a Serbian soldier who carried the same loaf of bread baked by his mother for 8 years through the Balkan Wars and WWI as a good luck charm until he returned home to Pirot. It remains preserved in a museum to this day.
Vv1p TIL during WWI a British recruitment tool called the “Pals Battalion” allowed people from the same town to enter the military together. Though it increased enlistment rolls, it also devastated whole regions of the UK whenever a battalion experienced heavy casualties. By WWII the idea was abandoned.