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TIL that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, women turned their flour sacks into into dresses, underwear, towels, curtains, quilts, and other household necessities. So flour companies started packing their flour in bags with pretty patterns.

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BPBL TIL Clint Eastwood helped finance a private mission in 1981 into Laos to see if there were still American POWs alive.
a8VbL TIL: About Alphonse Bertillion, an anthropologist and chief of France’s Judicial Identification Services who developed and was featured in the first standardized mug shot.
DG0p TIL an FDA official saved the US from a generation of children with birth defects such as flipper-like arms and feet by repeatedly blocking the authorization of a drug, already approved in Europe, known as Thalidomide.
6EGLW TIL that the Tarantula Nebula, a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud over 160,000 light years distant, contains the most luminous known star. The nebula’s luminosity is so great that if it were as close to Earth as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would cast shadows on the ground.
GYRkQ TIL a Toronto man built a wooden staircase for safe entry to a park for $550 after he learned that the city-made staircase would cost $65K-150K. Although it was removed by city staffs due to safety concerns, the mayor called and thanked him for his effort, and a new stairway was built for $10K.