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TIL soccer was a popular and successful sport in the US up until the 1930s. However a series of disputes between rival leagues and FIFA (called the Soccer Wars) , and the onset of the Great Depression led to a massive decline in the popularity of the sport.

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p8eJb TIL the training for the original The Matrix movie was so intense Hugo Weaving (Smith) needed hip surgery and Keanu Reeves (Neo) suffered a two-level fusion of his cervical spine which had begun to cause paralysis in his legs, requiring him to undergo neck surgery.
W7pN TIL Sex surrogates are people legally paid to have sex with people who are having sexual problems
69APW TIL that Oasis released a song titled "Wibbling Rivalry", a 15 minute interview that has no music and only includes the two brothers of the band, Noel and Liam, arguing for the majority of it. The song charted at number 52 on the UK Singles Chart.
d8grZ TIL The word "checkmate" is derived from the Persian shāh māt ("the king is helpless").
DKeg TIL: The discoverer of a gene for Green Fluorescent Protein lost his grant, didn’t get tenure, left academe and was working at a car dealership in Huntsville, Alabama, when he learned that former colleagues had won the Nobel Prize using the gene he sequenced.