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TIL the Mechanical Turk was a chess playing machine from 1770 that seemed to be able to compete against a human chess player like artificial intelligence. Except that it simply hid another human player within itself.

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YpaMG TIL Mark Hamill was cast in the original pilot for the television series Eight is Enough. He was locked into a five-year contract, however he requested to be released so he could audition for Star Wars.
PJKg TIL famous mathematician Paul Erdos was once challenged to quit taking amphetamines for one month by a concerned friend. He succeeded, but complained “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict, but I didn’t get any work done…you’ve set mathematics back a month”.
wop7M TIL Port Hedland, a tiny little town in North Western Australia, is home to the 2nd largest bulk export port in the world and the #1 highest tonnage port in Australia with annual throughput of over 500 million tonnes of mostly iron ore headed to China.
7AaZ TIL that HSBC Bank has been laundering money for major drug cartels and international terrorists for almost a decade.
0LXN TIL an Irishman called Peter Lacy is considered one of Russia’s greatest generals his tactics helped to defeat the Swedes at Poltava and he managed to cross The Crimea to battle the Turks when others had failed due to his knowledge of weather and tidal patterns