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TIL an American Idol contestant was so humiliated by her televised appearance on the show that she killed herself on Paula Abdul’s lawn [2008]

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4xp5 TIL that President Harry S. Truman commanded an artillery battery in WW1 in the US Army, and under his command, ‘Battery D did not lose a single man in France.’
6ao7 TIL Robert E. Lee privately opposed the confederacy and slavery, and was offered command of the union army, but ultimately decided he couldn’t wage war against his own state, Virginia.
7xLx TIL that the Normandy beach landing scene in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan cost $12Million alone, employed use of over 1,500 extras and has been rated ‘the best battle scene of all time’ by Empire magazine
gMam8 TIL the mathematician Paul Erdős regularly used amphetamines to increase his mathematical output. His friend bet him he couldn't stop using them for a month - Erdős won the bet but claimed that it had caused mathematics to be set back by a month.
nepe9 TIL about the Raid on Alexandria, when 6 Italian men managed to sneak in the fortified harbour of Alexandria using manned torpedoes. They then placed charges that sank two battleships and highly damaged several others, paralyzing the British fleet in the Mediterranean for months. Early example of Sp