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TIL that slave hymnals had coded messages meant to help slaves escape to freedom. Songs like Follow the Drinking Gourd and Steal Away to Jesus were full of signal phrases that meant things like ‘Follow this star north’ or ‘An Underground Railroad agent is here to help, escape happening tonight.’

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1aey7 TIL Ketchup was invented by adapting a Chinese recipe called Cat Sup - a thick tomato sauce with special seasoning and starch.
e0m4 TIL the First Blood (Rambo) book ends with Rambo committing suicide. This ending was filmed for the movie but decided against.
9n8D TIL in 1908 Teddy Roosevelt approached the Smithsonian Institution with an idea. He would collect specimens from Africa to have sent back for display and would be of unique value. The “unique value” he was referring to was the chance to acquire specimens shot by the president of the United States.
7n4r TIL of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, a group that “supports human extinction primarily because… it would prevent environmental degradation.”
j6nBa TIL that when designing the Hewlett-Packard 9100A desktop calculator, Bill Hewlett insisted that it be small enough to fit on his desk's typewriter stand. The prototype was slightly too large. A HP carpenter secretly modified the desk so the calculator would fit.