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TIL because of a treaty in 1920, there are no alcohol taxes in Svalbard. However alcohol is also rationed there, with residents only allowed 24 cans of beer or 2 litres of hard liquor per month. Locals must present an alcohol card at purchase, while tourists use their boarding pass.

yQEXV TIL laminated safety glass was invented by chemist Édouard Bénédictus after a lab accident in 1903. A glass flask coated with the plastic cellulose nitrate was dropped, shattering but not breaking into pieces. In 1909 he filed a patent, after hearing of a car accident causing injury by glass debris.
98Ar TIL Lieutenant “Mad” Jack Churchill was the only soldier of WWII to kill a man with a longbow, and the first to go into battle with one in hundreds of years. He did this while also armed with a broadsword and bagpipes, which he played while killing enemies.
lo9Pr TIL Mother Teresa encouraged members of her order to secretly baptise dying patients, without regard to the individual's religion. A former member of the MOC, writes that "Sisters were to ask each person in danger whether they want a 'ticket to heaven' to lure them for consent and then baptize them.
VBV64 TIL Sydney Greenstreet was not a movie actor until he was 61 years old, his first acting experience was in the movie The Maltese Falcon (1941) as Kasper Gutman. he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in this movie.
nG7W TIL when Michael Jackson died, overall web traffic increased by up to 20%, websites like Twitter and Wikipedia all crashed and Google initially believed they were under DDoS attack. It is seen as an unprecedented moment in the history of the Internet.