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TIL that songwriter Robert Sherman was struggling to write a catchy song for Julie Andrews to sing in Mary Poppins. When Robert's son received the polio inoculation, and he discovered the medicine was put on a sugar cube, he was inspired to write "A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down."

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VBV8D TIL that during Watergate, in an effort to stop the Oval Office Tapes from entering the public record verbatim, the Nixon Administration proposed a compromise where Senator John C. Stennis, who was hard of hearing, would listen to the tapes and report on their contents. The plan ultimately failed.
woY86 TIL according the Oxford Dictionary, there are no words that come after "thrice" to mean "four times"
b649p TIL nazi preparations to invade Britain (Operation Sea Lion) after France fell in 1940 were obvious to the British, so they began to bolster their defenses to make any invasion as costly as possible. This included removing all street, road, and railway signs to sow maximum confusion in the enemy.
0JQy TIL a sect of judaism, Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Jewish Messiah.
jNlEv TIL that there is an alive 'castrato'. Javier Medina was chemically castrated due to leukemia at the age of 8 years, later in life he began his musical formation in choirs becoming the first castrato the the world has heard in almost a century.