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TIL that US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was forced to invent a new signature to be put on US bills. His old signature was just a bunch of loops

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YpM0P TIL the boycott was named after Charles Boycott, a man so hated that people wanted nothing to do with him
X0VKr Today I learned that Mini-Me from Austin Powers is inspired by a character from the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau named Majai
l7jm7 TIL Columbus used foreknowledge of the 1504 lunar eclipse to convince indigenous Jamaicans to support him
wLBPE TIL of Robert Fortune who in the 19th century was hired by the British East India Company to infiltrate China and steal their tea and reveal their tea-making process kept secret for thousands of years.
9wZ8X TIL Johannes Kepler's mother Katharina, who first sparked his interest in astronomy at age 6 with the Great Comet of 1577, was accused of witchcraft using garbled contents of mankind's first science fiction The Dream, which he wrote. He succeeded in acquitting and releasing her alive, a rare result