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TIL candles were put on cakes originally by the greeks who would put them on rounded cakes to signify the moon and its glow in honor of Artemis, the Goddess of the moon.

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7rMR7 TIL: Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
kMQ5 TIL Violets can be smelled for only a few moments at a time because they get their scent from ionine which shuts the smell receptors off after simulating them. After a few breaths the scent pops up again but the brain registers it as a new stimulus. So everytime you smell a violet is a first time.
VMQPk TIL of Harold Wobber, a 47-year-old war veteran who committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. After his death, his suicide note was found and read: "I'm going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I won't jump."
7MPZ TIL that a secret soviet intelligence agent is primarily responsible for thwarting Operation Long Jump, concocted by Adolf Hitler, which was an attempt to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference in 1943. This might be responsible for saving the world.
b9pJE TIL Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine. However, as it turned out, it was merely a marketing scheme.