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TIL the mathematician Paul Erdős regularly used amphetamines to increase his mathematical output. His friend bet him he couldn't stop using them for a month - Erdős won the bet but claimed that it had caused mathematics to be set back by a month.

D1Pyp TIL Bayezid II, an Ottoman Sultan that took in displaced Jews from the Spanish Inquisition, reportedly taunted the King of Spain by saying: "You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler, he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!"
yQWQJ TIL The reason why some cops touch the back of your tailight at traffic stops is because before dashcams it was a way to leave their fingerprint on the car in case something bad happened they had proof they were there
wAw1 TIL that letting worms eat your garbage creates worm castings, a substance with 35% increase in phosphorus and magnesium, and 50% more nitrogen than the initial waste. Cuba has been using this for over 25 years as an alternative to agricultural products unavailable to them due to the embargo.
wv8E TIL of Scotty Phillip, remembered as the “Man who saved the Buffalo”. A South Dakota rancher credited with bringing back Buffalo from the brink of extinction.
0wGoM TIL Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg, caught a KGB recruit by making the world's first honeypot trap using 50 old computer terminals and an office phone line. The network access issue that led Stoll to the hacker was initially over 9 seconds of unpaid computer time in a library.