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TIL there is a genetic disorder which makes the affected person have an uniquely happy personality and an interest in water

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neVE9 TIL about the first robot. The servant of Philon was an ancient Greek humanoid figure capable of automatically filling a wine cup when placed in its hand. It accomplished its task using a pneumatic system that was very advanced for its time.
8eLw8 TIL director and writer of A Knight's Tale, Brian Helgeland, said that he intended to show what Geoffrey Chaucer (played by Paul Bettany) might have been doing that inspired him to write The Canterbury Tales during the six months in which he seems to have gone missing in 1372.
9Y9aX TIL Japanese Gen. Kuribayashi knew he was facing unsurmountable odds during the invasion of Iwo Jima. He forbade standard Japanese banzai charges, leading an American general to say he was "one smart bastard." At the end, he inflicted 26k American casualties while fighting with "emaciated men."
1EZX TIL the cuneiform writing system, which was used by humans for millennia, was indecipherable for more than 2000 years. A British army officer decoded the language in 1837 after recording and studying symbols he found in Persian cliff-sides.
m15LM TIL in 2011, a Korean sect known as “Good News Mission” scammed around 400 teachers with a recruitment scheme to teach English in Mexico that were really lectures where the guests were forced by guards to engage in a ballroom and were subjected to physical punishment for things such as tardiness.