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TIL that George Orwell was very into pranks growing up. Amongst his more malicious, was to create an advertisement which implied his college tutor John Crace was a pederast.

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GPxE TIL: Lack of connection is a key reason why people have suicidal thoughts; isolation contributes to and escalates their pain.
JYyOk TIL Betty Robinson, an Olympic runner, was involved in a plane crash in 1931 and was wrongly pronounced dead upon first being discovered. She spend 7 months in a coma and it took her 2 years to learn to walk normally again. In 1936, she returned to the US olympic team and won gold in the relay.
lpb5 TIL Wal-Mart closed in Germany after citizens didn’t like the American supermarket experience; people didn’t like baggers handling their food and men frequently thought smiling cashiers were flirting.
OoRNX TIL that the language of Venice, Venetian or "Venetan", is not Italian nor a dialect of it, but a separate member of the Romance family spoken by close to four million people in north-eastern Italy.
v1Jo8 TIL that Ronald Reagan was so indelibly type-cast as the 'great loser' in films that when Jack Warner, movie magnate and his longtime employer, was first apprised of the actor's ambition to run for Governor of California, he protested: "No, Jimmy Stewart for Governor. Ronald Reagan for Best Friend."