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TIL train robber Elmer McCurdy's mummified corpse was used as decoration in carnivals during the 1920's and wasn't properly identified as real until 1976. It scared a young boy named Mark Taylor so greatly it stuck with him into adulthood, and inspired him to create He-Man's nemesis: Skeletor.

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wOP7 TIL RoboCop was originally X-rated in 1987, and edited for a R release in theatres.
LkdM9 TIL that it's illegal to own just one Guinea Pig in Switzerland. The law was part of a legislative push to grant “social rights” to pets that tend to get lonely.
xKb1 TIL naturalist John Muir “kidnapped” Theodore Roosevelt from a party and took him into the wilderness to see the beauty of Yosemite, in turn prompting the U.S. president to double the number of national parks
0d4X1 TIL that in 1948, a U.S. Air Force meteorologist suggested testing nuclear weapons on the East Coast but was rejected. Instead, the weapons were tested in the West and exposed millions of Americans to fallout.
WjDo TIL it’s impossible to smoothly scan your eyes from left to right (or vice versa), except if you’re tracking a moving object. Otherwise, your vision jumps from focus point to focus point, even while reading.