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TIL that an ex-girlfriend of J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, auctioned off intimate letters Salinger sent her during their relationship. One man, Peter Norton, bought all of the letters for a considerable sum and promptly returned them to Salinger.

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0weZy TIL Waylon Jennings left the recording of "We Are the World" because of a dispute over lyrics that were to be sung in Swahili. The lyrics were later dropped after Stevie Wonder pointed out that Ethiopians did not speak Swahili.
5ljp TIL that there was an attempt to assassinate George W. Bush on the morning on 9/11. His assassins were turned away because they didn’t have an appointment to meet with him.
e0Ng5 TIL In WW2 on D Day, the Germans had a devastating thermobaric weapon called Taifun B, based on kerosene & coal dust, to be delivered over the battlefield by rocket propelled canisters. They positioned it in Calais, so it didn’t get used against the landings.
xVVOB TIL of the Nationality Rooms. 30 classrooms in the University of Pittsburgh that are each built as a museum grade representation of a different country's culture.
N797P TIL about the tabulating machine, which was invented to help process the 1890 Census and spawned the data processing industry, IBM, and modern computing as a whole