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TIL Hugo Boss founded his company in 1924, ten years later advertising that he had been a “supplier for National Socialist uniforms since 1924”, eventually used POW’s and forced laborers for mass production.

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xV8x0 TIL December 25 was originally a pagan celebration, Sol Invictus, the “Unconquerable Sun.”
awZOZ TIL that composer Johann Schobert (NOT Schubert) died from eating poisonous mushrooms, after two people told him not to eat them. A doctor friend insisted that they were edible. Schobert, the doctor, his wife, and all but one of his children ate the resulting mushroom soup and died.
VBQo8 TIL that Roald Dahl wrote a short story that predicted story-writing machines. In it, most authors end up signing contracts to let the machines write stories in their names, while a handful of authors struggle on. He ends by saying, “Give us strength, Oh Lord, to let our children starve.”
9n0M TIL there have been computers programmed in “ternary” instead of the conventional binary. One such computer, built by the Soviets in 1958, had distinct advantages over binary computers such as increased power efficiency, cheaper parts and easier implementation of certain operations.
rRrE1 TIL that when Upton Sinclair published his landmark 1906 work "The Jungle” about the lives of meatpacking factory workers, he hoped it would lead to worker protection reforms. Instead, it lead to sanitation reforms, as middle class readers were horrified their meat came from somewhere so unsanitary.