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TIL Newton's phrase about standing on the shoulders of giants dates back to at least 1159. John of Salisbury wrote then that "we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature."

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oELr TIL that Crispin Glover was not in Back to the Future II, they used prosthetic molds of his face onto a different actor causing him to file a lawsuit.
mQGP TIL the total cost for U.S. nuclear weapons from 1940 to 1998 was $5.5 trillion. The US public debt in 1998 was $5.3 trillion.
eyj4 TIL in 2012, the White House responded to a petition to have a Death Star built by stating that “the Administration does not support blowing up planets” and that it would not fund a weapon “with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship”.
XXRX TIL scientists in Berlin asked adults to play Super Mario 64 over a period of 2 months for 30 minutes a day. The group showed increases of grey matter, demonstrating “the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain increase.”
OG6B4 TIL that honeypot ants were a part of the diets of indigenous Australians.