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TIL the silent era film trope of peril with buzzsaws in sawmills came from an actual 19th-century play called "Blue Jeans"

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e041g TIL The Mann Act (USA law) makes it a crime to drive across a state border with an unmarried woman and have sex with her later, even if she is your girlfriend.
yO4e TIL 1997 Britain required civilians to surrender almost all privately owned handguns to the police. More than 162,000 handguns and 1.5 million pounds of ammunition were confiscated, however the British homicide rate continued to increase, rising 50% by 2002
JMDQ TIL When Tupac Shakur misbehaved as a child, his mother Afeni would make her son read The New York Times as punishment.
YpkeP TIL George Washington allegedly said before his death that he "will never set foot in London again!" so when they erected a statue of him in London, they put US soil under the statue to honor that claim.
p84XO Today I learned that, in the 1920's, a new "fixed length" calendar with 13 months of 28 days each, was voted in by a League of Nations special committee. Although this calendar never gained widespread adoption, it remained the official calendar of the Kodak company until 1989.