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TIL that the last Ottoman Sultan spent the first 56 years of his life as a captive in a room known as “The Cage” before ascending to the throne. The purpose of the practice was to confine rival male heirs.

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Brkly TIL while trying to make a point about how difficult it is for new writers to be published, English author and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing submitted two novels, "The Diary of a Good Neighbour" and "If the Old Could", to her publisher in the UK under the penname Jane Somers - and both were rejected
lGkr Today I learned Amazon remotely deleted copies of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, that were distributed through the Kindle store in 2009. This chilling example of potentially malicious behavior would have never been possible without DRM.
0wENM TIL a rare 400-year-old shimpaku tree, which was due to be entered in a Japanese beauty competition, was stolen from a roughly 5,000 hectare park run by a fifth generation bonsai master whose family practice dates back to the Edo period (1603-1868)
W7XPY TIL that the world's longest floating bridge spans Lake Washington in Seattle and is called the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. It is 7,710 feet long, the concrete floating bridge is the longest floating bridge in the world carrying State Route 520 from Seattle to its eastern suburbs.
rnRo TIL that From Dusk Till Dawn, Planet Terror, Death Proof, and Kill Bill all exist in the same universe, and that From Dusk Till Dawn actually happens last, chronologically