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TIL After being upstaged by a mule outside of the opera where they were performing, the Marx Brothers switched from their musical act to telling jokes in order to keep the crowd entertained. It worked, and the rest is history.

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oBpDY TIL that Maldivian is written using a unique alphabet which uses Arabic numerals as its first nine consonants, and Indic numerals for the following nine. The script may have been invented as a secret code before being adopted for more general use.
lyD1 TIL that there’s very specific protocol for handing out business cards in Japan. You should make sure your business cards are translated into Japanese on one side. Use both hands to pass them out with the Japanese side facing up, and accept others’ cards with both hands.
7ApZ TIL in Philadelphia there are such things as “courtesy cards” which are often given to the friends or family of a police officer and they allow the user to get out of minor offenses such as speeding or running a stop sign if given to a police officer while they’re writing the ticket.
XEVWE TIL that a gang of mobsters in NYC started a pizzeria called Ray's in the 1960s as a front for their drug dealing. Eventually Ray's pizza became almost as profitable as their drug dealing.
BgrDx TIL a significant part of the local economy of Kinmen County is making high quality chef's knives from the over 1 million artillery shells fired on the island in the 1950s. Shells filled with propaganda leaflets instead of explosives landed whole, leaving tons of high quality steel lying around.