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TIL Hou Jing, a general during the China's North-South period, seized control of the government of the Liang dynasty by rebelling. After that, in an act of vanity, he gave himself the title of "General of the Universe, Past, Present, and Future, Commander of all Forces in the Six Directions".

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Z8V7Y TIL of Michael Orchard, a heroic man who broke into his neighbor's burning home to rescue their dog, and who later found out that the house fire was actually NOT real but was just a hallucination from the LSD he was consuming.
Xb48 TIL of the first person to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge - a professional high diver who wanted to ‘demonstrate that people did not die by simply falling through the air’. He proved himself correct after falling, safely, 135 feet through the air; dying from impact upon hitting the water.
8e4BZ TIL In 2005, a scholar made an off hand suggestion that Niccolo Machiavelli may have been abused by his latin teacher, Paolo Sassi. This caused controversy, with another scholar defending Sassi's "upright moral standing". Years later, new evidence showed that Sassi was indeed a predator
new1P TIL that the shift (maj) key's name originated from the typewriter, where one had to press and hold the button to shift up the case stamp to change to capital letters.
Q7Gk TIL That a British Airways flight experienced a blown windshield at 17,000 feet, the pilot was thrown out of the cockpit and was left half in the cockpit and half out. The pilot suffered only minor injuries, even after he was presumed dead.