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TIL the Bible’s story of Noah’s Ark is based on a 1st millennium Assyrian copy of a story known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. This story itself is over 4100 year old and is considered to be the earliest surviving great work of literature in human history.

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rNXm4 TIL that before ice cream cones were invented, people used "penny licks" to eat ice cream from street vendors: a small glass which the customer would lick clean and return to the vendor. They were banned in 1898 due to concerns about the spread of disease, particularly cholera and tuberculosis.
wLGM7 TIL that actor David Herman (Michael Bolton from the movie "Office Space") got himself fired from MADtv by screaming all his lines during read-through. Apparently, he wanted to leave the show to do other projects, but Fox would not let him out of his contract.
awgrJ TIL To promote “The Room”, Tommy Wiseau personally spent $5,000 a month on a highway billboard advert for 5 years. This is in spite of the fact that the film only played for 2 weeks in the summer of 2003. Wiseau kept promoting it for years after it closed.
Vwbk TIL that in 1771, a Japanese woman known only as Aochababa (green tea hag) was dissected to compare Chinese anatomical knowledge to the Dutch. The Japanese were astonished to see that the Dutch were correct, and wrote up their findings in a 4 volume text, overturning centuries of Chinese medicine.
W7JgL TIL about The Public Universal Friend; a genderless Quaker who preached in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s