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TIL that in 1884, halfway through the 10 year plan to produce an up to date English dictionary, the team had only reached the word ‘Ant’ The final volume was published 49 years after they started.

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5VXQQ TIL about black swan events, major events that were rationalised in hindsight as predictable but were outside of the imaginable for people at the time of their occurrence . Examples for these are the 9/11 attacks, the start of WWI and the dissolution of the USSR.
X5or TIL In the mid-90s, a bar in Moscow named “The Hungry Duck” introduced a ladies night whereby only women were allowed in for two hours, and were given unlimited booze for free. At 10 p.m., following a male strip act, men were allowed in.
ADppB TIL due to a typo the wrong type of kitty litter was used during a nuclear materials containment. This caused an explosion and more than $2B in cleanup.
5YE4k TIL of the chariot race sequence in Ben-Hur (1959): the set was the largest ever built at the time and took over a year and thousands of workers to build; the director's son, a stuntman, almost died; the extras rioted on camera; and the cars filming the race were slower than the horses
loGLB TIL no countries have purple on their flag because up until the 1800s, purple was worth more than its weight in gold.