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TIL: The Roman emperor Caligula loved his horse Incitatus so much that he tried to turn the horse into a senator. His plan for equine politics was cut short by his assassination. Many historians believe the stunt was to humiliate his fellow senators.

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yQdll TIL that the Krypteia, a super secretive special unit in ancient Sparta, was the unit given the dubious task of controling their slave population by annual massacres. Even more messed up: they had to do the killings in secrecy and was punished by whipping if anyone caught them.
jg5p TIL Jimi Hendrix was once invited to play with Cream alongside Eric Clapton. In the middle of the show, Clapton walked off stage. He was found in the back shaking angrily and smoking a cigarette. When asked what was wrong, he simply replied, “You never told me he was that fucking good.”
MZDa TIL 7 members of an isolated Indian tribe emerged from the Amazon and made contact with people in a village near the Peruvian border because “violent attacks” by outsiders had driven them from the forest. Later, details emerged that their elder relatives were massacred and their houses set on fire.
xVnB TIL people suffering borderline or moderate depression more accurately interpret reality.
9gDX TIL Quake III Arena, needing to calculate x^(-½) quickly, used a piece of code so strange, the developers commented the code with “evil floating point bit level hacking” and “what the fuck?”