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TIL that King Edward IV borrowed $348 from Oxford University in 1861. The king paid back $160 but never covered the remaining $224. The debt was forgotten until 1996, when it was rediscovered and calculated to have accumulated to $290 Billion.

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R5gDw TIL Tolkien wanted to create what we would nowadays call a transmedia multiverse. "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme. The cycles should be linked and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd."
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xRl5 TIL that Whitey Bulger, the notorious gangster, had served time in the maximum security prison of Alcatraz for four years. Later, while on the lam as one of America’s most wantef federal fugitives, he went back to tour the facility.