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TIL two Christian monks smuggled silkworms out of China in bamboo canes. Those silkworms were used to give the Byzantine Empire a trade monopoly in Europe, which became the foundation of their economy for the next 650 years

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1NA8 TIL Marcia, George Lucas’s ex-wife, got an Oscar for her editing and was behind some of the better ideas of Star Wars. She got very little credit after the divorce.
LQXap TIL the Saturn V rocket, which first took humans to the Moon, weighed just under three million kilogrammes before launch, or roughly the weight of 400 elephants. More than 90% of this weight was fuel alone, leaving a payload of just 43,000 kilogrammes to reach the Moon's orbit.
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WkGBX TIL that the triangular thing in oujia board is called a planchette
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