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22

TIL that all 3 medalists of the men's triple jump at the 2024 Olympics were born in Cuba and had previously represented Cuba in international competition, but none represented Cuba at the Olympics

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X8Dr TIL Eric Carle, the American-born illustrator and writer of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, moved to Germany as a kid in the 1930s, and was conscripted to dig trenches for the German army when he was 15 years old. Now 87 years old, he is one of the youngest surviving WWII veterans.
BrQ7K TIL In the late Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries would chain them to the bookcase. This was widely practiced until the 18th century.
N7BlP TIL of Fritz Suhren, a concentration camp commandant. When the allies were close, he took Odette Sansom, an inmate whom he believed to be Churchill's niece, and drove with her to the US base, hoping it would save him. She was in fact a British spy under a false name. He was hanged in 1950
WajL TIL Charles Darwin collected a Galápagos tortoise during his 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands as part of his round-the-world survey expedition. It lived 175 years and died of heart failure at the Australia Zoo in 2006.
0LBj TIL in 1993 when a US Military food scientist was asked what should be used in the pictograph instructions to prop up the heater of their new “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” rations, he replied “I don’t know. Let’s make it a rock or something.” The rock illustration and the iconic phrase remain on MREs today.