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TIL 90 years before the invention of the modern wireless telephone, Alexander Graham Bell invented a device that could transmit speech using sunlight.

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lLdK TIL when composing the song “‘39”, Queen guitarist Brian May jokingly asked bassist John Deacon to play the double bass on the recording. Deacon didn’t got the joke and actually learned the instrument. In two days.
4rPN TIL when Google was losing a lot of female employees because they weren’t coming back to work after giving birth, Google lengthened maternity leave to 5 months from 3, and changed it from partial pay to full pay, and the amount of women who didn’t come back after maternity leave dropped by 50%.
JYB14 TIL that in 1410, King Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughter triggered by a joke told by his favourite court jester.
NXrLb TIL at a 2005 congressional hearing, mentions of the Sedan nuclear test was incorrectly transcribed as "Sudan" in the record. Sudanese officials later stated that they "take this issue seriously and with extreme importance" and allegedly blamed the U.S. for raising cancer rates among their people.
ebxE TIL that when George Washington moved to Philadelphia to serve as president, he rotated his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania in order to circumvent a law that freed slaves being held in the state for longer than 6 continuous months. The rotation itself was illegal, but no one opposed him.