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TIL It is illegal to give out free tobacco products in the UK unless you're a member of Parliament and it's within Westminster Palace as royal palaces are exempt from legislation

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a45o TIL there is a legend that flexible glass was invented around 20AD, when a craftsman presented Tiberius Caesar a bowl of this glass, whereupon he threw it to the ground and it did not shatter. Fearing the implications of such a material, the Caesar had the man beheaded, the formula now lost forever.
b6YbE TIL Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler's work touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler.
QnWX TIL President Lyndon Johnson would play pranks on unsuspecting guests by driving his amphibious convertible into lakes screaming about the brakes being out
E1epP TIL that Eberhard I, the Duke of Wuerttemberg (1445-1495) once was praised as the richest prince amongst the German princes, as he was said to be able to rest his head on the lap of every one of his subjects without having fear for his life or property.
kdm7 TIL that in 1995 an Australian doctor created the ‘Deliverance Machine’: a euthanasia device which utilised a software called 'Deliverance’ - patients were posed three questions via a notebook computer, if they answered yes to all three, the machine administered a lethal dose of barbiturates.