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TIL that once the British 1881 census was compiled, officials noted an alarming rise in the number of individuals being reported as “deaf and dumb”. After enquiries were made, it transpired that many enumerators had recorded babies as being deaf and dumb simply because they could not speak.

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via reddit.com

ZpyWo TIL that some medieval monks interpreted the scriptural Nemo Deum vidit (“No one hath seen God”), along with many other references to No-one in the Bible, to mean that Nemo was a certain person. Everything impossible, inadmissible, inaccessible is, on the contrary, permitted for Nemo.
oR7DY TIL Singer Barry White was a heavy smoker and smoked around 150 cigarettes, or 7 to 8 packs, per day.
olvE TIL that a Hungarian man named László Polgár believed that any child could become a genius in any field as long as education starts before they turn 3 and they begin to specialise at 6. His youngest, Judit, became the strongest female chess player of all time and ranked within the world’s top ten.
mx5Wo TIL of Andy—a footless goose born in the 1980s who walked around in baby shoes. He rapidly became a huge star and appeared all over the media, before he was murdered in 1991. His death sparked a nation-wide outrage and a $10,000 reward for information about his killer, but the case was never solved.
rNk6d TIL that in Speed 2 the scene where the ship crashes into the island was made with a non-animated partial boat crashing into the real island, and was the most expensive stunt ever filmed at $25M in 1997.