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TIL of Forrest Bird, the creator of some of the first reliable mass-produced mechanical ventilators. He sold his first units to the army, and they were made of strawberry shortcake tins and door knobs.

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eVmD TIL reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes was being kept awake at night by the bright neon sign from the ‘Silver Slipper’ casino, so he bought the casino and dismantled the sign.
VBW80 TIL Bolivia and Venezuela (as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) are named after Simón Bolívar
b9Yo0 TIL that after World War II, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was recruited by the CIA as an anti-communist counter-intelligence offer in France; upon being discovered by French authorities, the CIA helped Barbie escape to Bolivia.
EgyYp TIL Alice Pierce, who played nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz in the television sitcom Bewitched, received a posthumous Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She died of ovarian cancer during production of season 2, having kept it secret since joining the show.
bXKa TIL that Pixar started as a hardware company whose core product was the Pixar Image Computer, a system primarily sold to government agencies and the medical community, and made short animations to show off the capabilities of their product.