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TIL the crew of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station have an annual winter tradition where they watch all three versions of “The Thing”, a horror film about an alien lifeform that attacks researchers on an Antarctic base.

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pYZQb TIL that the last ship the legendary American frigate USS Constitution ever captured was an illegal slave ship named H. N. Gambrill. The 1853 seizing occurred while Constitution was serving as flagship of the United States Navy's anti-slave trading Africa Squadron.
nev0b TIL that when spelling numbers in English, the smallest number with a “ c “ is octillion.
1an54 TIL Cuban cigar factories hire "lectores" who read stories to the cigar-makers. [Video, 2:15]
5wK8 TIL that Valve never expected “the cake is a lie” joke to become as popular as it did. They expected a metal hoop that roles past the player during the ending cutscene named “Hoopy the Hoop” would become the most well known joke in Portal. Hoopy even reappears in Portal 2.
r1Qy TIL a Russian woman in the 1700’s gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets in just 40 years with the same man.