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TIL of Edmond Albius. As a 12 year old slave boy in 1841, he invented the technique for pollinating vanilla orchids profitably. Without this technique, it’s unlikely that vanilla would be nearly as well known as it is today.

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O95L TIL Mel Brooks was a combat engineer at the Battle of the Bulge. When the Nazis played their propaganda over loudspeakers, he responded by setting up his own sound system and playing music by Jewish singer Al Jolson
JJZl TIL that Marilyn vos Savant received nearly 1,000 letters of complaint with signatures bearing PhDs after (correctly) stating that choosing to switch doors in the Monty Hall Problem would double the chances of winning.
Mw0m TIL That Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have dissected more than 30 people in his pursuit to further understand human anatomy, and his more than 240 detailed drawings and over 13,000 words of observations revealed many then unknown characteristics of our bodies. However, all this remain unpublished.
78lOM TIL A California drug dealer fled with 60 pounds of meth from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office after a sting operation failed, the undercover investigators attempted to identify traffickers and met with a suspect. After the transaction, the suspect fled at high speeds.
v1dQ4 TIL Orange Crush soda originally had orange pulp in the bottles, giving it a "fresh squeezed" illusion even though the raw pulp was merely added during bottling, rather than actually being the remains from freshly squeezed oranges