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TIL: To camouflage aircraft factories in suburban Los Angeles during WWII, the military built simulated neighborhoods on their rooftops complete with fake cars, roads, homes and foliage. Actors were hired to inhabit these spaces too.

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XyOP TIL John Davis, creator of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, was invited to see the last shuttle launch. Two guys at the launch approached him and asked if he created the show. After confirming to them that he did, they replied, “You’re the reason we went to work for NASA!”
69eBQ TIL: Biotech companies are using precision fermentation to turn plant material (e.g. potatoes) into chocolate in an effort to decrease the child-labor (2 million kids working in Western African cacao farms) and deforestation (-80% in Ivory Coast alone) caused by supplying the world with chocolate.
Vgj8 TIL that a Belgian man who was being evicted from his home when he cheated with his wife, rigged his house up with over 20 firearm traps. He even made a riddle for the next home owners but accidently shot himself with one of the traps. The Military anti-mining team took 3 weeks to disarm 19 traps.
8aNnX TIL in September 1554 Mary I of England started to show the first signs of pregnancy. When by July the following year she still hadn't given birth, the Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michieli mocked that the pregnancy would more likely "end in wind rather than anything else".
gjn7 TIL President Reagan’s Surgeon General outraged fellow conservatives with his AIDS report, which called for sex ed to start in 3rd grade and explained in plain language how HIV can/not be spread. The deeply religious Presbyterian refused to alter the report or make it more morally judgmental.