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TIL cocktails originated from horses who had their tails docked. In the 1800's they docked tails of horses that were not thoroughbred - 'cocktailed horses'. It later referred to a vulgar, ill-bred person, and finally an 'acceptable diluted alcoholic drink, not purebred, and raised above its station'

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459X TIL that despite being used to make balloons float and our voices squak, helium is a rare element (on Earth) which is only getting rarer due to the fact it floats out of our atmosphere. This is problematic, as it has useful scientific applications, and is currently essential in MRI technology.
DQ0ZD TIL that Aimen Dean was a former member and bomb maker for al-Qaeda turned MI6 spy
WPld TIL in WW2 Japan unwittingly created one of the best fighter aircraft of the war. When the inline engines intended for the Ki-61 were destroyed in a bombing raid, engineers shoehorned in a radial engine instead. The resulting amalgamation was the venerable Ki-100.
KYwb4 TIL that Santorio Santorio, an Italian Professor, Physician, qnd Physiologist weighed everything he consumed and excreted over a period of 30yrs in the study of Insensible Perspiration or what we know today as metabolism.
d8OE7 TIL Torakusa Yamaha founded Yamaha in 1887 due to his obsession with western technology and science. After successfully fixing a school’s reed organ, he realized the business opportunity of instrument brand, since at the time there were no Japanese makers of Western instruments