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TIL that H.G. Wells wrote the classic Sci-Fi novels; The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds in the space of just four years.

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4XjJa TIL that the March of Dimes charity was founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help fight polio, and became such a success that the dime itself was redesigned in 1946 to honor him.
nWa9P TIL that mathematician Paul Erdos regularly used amphetamines. A concerned friend bet Erdos $500 that he couldn’t go a month without taking them. Erdos won the bet, then complained that mathematics had been set back by a month.
nepe9 TIL about the Raid on Alexandria, when 6 Italian men managed to sneak in the fortified harbour of Alexandria using manned torpedoes. They then placed charges that sank two battleships and highly damaged several others, paralyzing the British fleet in the Mediterranean for months. Early example of Sp
epn74 TIL in 2006, a mother and son were convicted of trying to extort money from Cracker Barrel by claiming they found a dead mouse in her soup. Charges were filed after a necropsy showed the mouse had no soup in its lungs and had not been cooked, signs that it was dropped into the soup after its death.
RbK8 TIL Nazi censors wrote to J.R.R. Tolkien, inquiring whether he was of Jewish decent to see if they needed to ban his books in Germany. Tolkien wrote back saying he wished he could be so lucky.