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TIL a British company rebranded a golf ball locator device and sold it to several various militaries, and clamed it could detect explosive devices. In 2013, the inventor was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fraud. The device was a form of dowsing rod, and profited about £1.35 million.

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R74N9 TIL about Maroons, enslaved Africans who quickly escaped in the countries they were brought to and often joined indigenous populations to form warrior tribes with their own complex language, war and living cultures. Many Maroon warfare tactics have been co-opted into global army training today.
o0J7 TIL that until 2015 a French law prohibited bakers in Paris from taking vacations at the same time, to avoid a bread shortage like the one that helped cause the French Revolution. Bakers met to decide who would be open in July and who would be open in August.
D45r TIL if your name is based on Scottish ancestral names, Mc means “son of”, and “O” means grandson of.
B9PD TIL In 1945, after Japan had conceded defeat in World War II, Sony founder Masaru Ibuka invented a product to try and serve the millions of homes who had electricity but lacked the appliances to use it. The result was an electric rice cooker.
8OkZ TIL the word ‘Retarded’ was once championed to more accurately describe the (now dubbed) intellectually disabled , and replace its then synonyms, which had all become colloquialisms for being stupid; but today it’s considered offensive after having fallen prey to the same fate.