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TIL of Frances Perkins, first woman cabinet member, longest serving Secretary of Labor, and creator of Social Security

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KYrJ9 TIL in 1906 con man Wilhelm Voigt posed as a Prussian military officer and took a group of troops by train to the town of Köpenick, arresting the mayor and stealing 4000 German marks. He was viewed as a folk hero and the Kaiser later pardoned him. A statue of him stands outside the city hall.
1aG8X TIL The Titanic had an older sister ship called "Olympic", which became the only civilian ship to sink an enemy warship during WWI, when it turned around and rammed a German submarine attempting to attack it. The sub was gashed open by The Olympic's propellor.
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.
b8e0 TIL In December 2005, a doctor in England published research suggesting that girls often go through a stage where they hate their Barbie dolls and subject them to a range of punishments, including decapitation and placing the doll in a microwave oven.
W7XP9 TIL In recorded history, the deadliest tropical cyclone (over 300,000 killed in 1970) and the deadliest tornado (1,300 killed in 1989) both occurred in the country of Bangladesh