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TIL Abuse of the smoke signal is known to have contributed to the fall of the Western Zhou Dynasty, 8th century BCE. King You of Zhou had a habit of fooling his warlords with false warning beacons in order to amuse his queen. When an actual rebellion occurred, no one came to the aid of the king.

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9wp6B TIL about Janet Stephens, a hair stylist turned hairstyle archeologist. She visited a museum in 2001 and realized historians were wrong about hairstyles on Greek and Roman statues being wigs. She recreated the styles and published her findings in The Journal of Roman Archaeology.
PYrOE TIL that the southern most point in Canada -- Middle Island -- is at latitude 41.7, just 33km (20 miles) north of the 42nd parallel, where California begins
QNGGa TIL about the "Infernal Machine", a 25-barreled gun that the Corsican revolutionary Giuseppe Fieschi tried to assassinate King Louis Phillippe I with in 1835. The device killed 18 people in a single volley and injured 22 (as well as Fieschi himself), but only mildly grazed the King.
E1wkP TIL the most successful Nazi interrogator in world war 2 never physically harmed an enemy soldier, but treated them all with respect and kindness, taking them for walks, letting them visit their comrades in the hospital, even letting one captured pilot test fly a plane. Virtually everybody talked.
oBxa8 TIL that Sergeant Stubby, a stray dog found during military training in 1917, served with the 102nd Infantry Regiment in WWI, saving them repeatedly due to his ability to smell mustard gas at a distance. After the war, he became a celebrity, meeting three presidents and traveling around the country.