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TIL chief translator for European Parliament, Ioannis Ikonomou, speaks 32 languages fluently, including two dead ones

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9YoDQ TIL Nebraska passed a "Safe Haven Law" to ostensibly allow infants to be abandoned at certain locations without abandonment charges. However, it had no age cap, so people would abandon teenagers and older kids.
9w1dM TIL that the initial title of Alien was Star Beast. Its writer disliked it and changed it to Alien after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. The writer and his cowriter liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and an adjective.
D1Vgj TIL about the Proto-Indo-European motif of 'Chaoskampf', depicting a battle between a cultural deity and a 'chaos monster', often in the shape of a serpent/dragon. Nearly all Indo-European mythologies contain a version of it, and the protagonist is usually associated with thunder in some aspect.
RNlQ TIL that the mythological Cyclops possibly originated from natives from Mediterranean islands finding the prehistoric remains of extinct Dwarf Elephants, whose skull was only twice the size of humans and whose central nasal cavity was easily mistaken for a central eye socket.
yQ6av TIL of Elizabeth Van Lew. After her father died, she and her mother freed all his slaves. She then used her inheritance to free some of the slaves' relatives. During the Civil War, she operated a spy ring. When Richmond fell to the Union, she was the 1st person to raise the Union flag in the city