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TIL of Robert Fortune who in the 19th century was hired by the British East India Company to infiltrate China and steal their tea and reveal their tea-making process kept secret for thousands of years.

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5YxEQ TIL Charles Dickens once jumped in through the window of his wife-to-be's home dressed in a sailor suit, did a jig whilst playing the hornpipe, jumped back out the window again and re-entered the room as if nothing had happened.
0Byj TIL that for centuries in mainland Europe groups of people would just start dancing for days to months at a time & no one knows why. They broke ribs, collapsed bridges, and even died until in the 17th century the behavior halted abruptly and completely.
VMoKB TIL there is a supermassive void in space called the Boötes void and if the Milky Way had been in the center of the void, we wouldn't have known there were other galaxies until the 1960s. The void is 0.27% the width of the entire observable universe.
X04oR TIL that Simo Häyhä AKA the sniper White Death kept a Winter War diary, that was discovered in 2017 from his nephew's drawer, when a local museum was looking for memorabilia for an exhibition on Häyhä
Wk09X TIL that "president" was not a title for a big position before the US existed