› added 7 years ago

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TIL of Gino Bartali - champion Italian cyclist. During WWII, he cycled through Italy carrying messages for the Italian Resistance. He even smuggled Jews in a wagon with a secret compartment telling people it was part of his training.

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Y7JlB TIL country star Merle Haggard got his start in music after seeing Johnny Cash play while he was an inmate at San Quentin Prison at age 21
KYYPQ TIL about the almost completely unknown story of Félicette, a stray Parisian cat who was the only cat successfully launched into space - only to be euthanased weeks after
LkwKd TIL Clint Eastwood was mayor of tiny Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA in the 1980s; he ran because he wanted to lift a ban on public ice cream sales, flew home from movie sets for weekly council meetings, wrote a column in the town paper, and a local hotel changed their slogan to "make my stay".
wORJ TIL that when Sebastian Shaw, the face of Darth Vader, showed up on the set of Return of the Jedi, Ian McDiarmid (aka Emperor Palpatine), who was an old friend, asked him what he was doing there. His response: “I don’t know, dear boy, I think it’s something to do with science-fiction.”
GAGvN TIL that in Rosario, Argentina, the home city of Lionel Messi, people are banned from naming their children ‘Messi’