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TIL The word "Mesmerized" stems from a charlatan who operated in Paris in the late 1700's. Dr Franz Mesmer touted "universal magnetic fluid" existed in all animals and he claimed the ability to heal countless diseases through treatments with hypnotic and exotic elements.

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W7QDB TIL about Juliane Koepcke. At age 17 she survived alone 11 days in a rainforest, becoming the only survivor of the LANSA 508 crash. The plane was struck by lightning & broke apart in flight scattering more than a dozen passengers. Her unorthodox education allowed her to survive the hard journey out.
j6oOa TIL, In 1731, the Dey of Algiers presented King Frederick I of Sweden with a lion, one of the first lions in Scandinavia. When the lion died, the king sent it to a taxidermist. However, because he had never seen a lion before the taxidermy was poorly performed, resulting in a comically deformed face
MeLam TIL that J.K. Rowling wrote a real person into The Goblet of Fire. The girl was named Natalie McDonald, a Harry Potter fan who was dying of leukaemia while Rowling was still writing the book. You see her character as a first-year who dons the sorting hat and is sorted into Gryffindor.
jNY9M TIL When the Eagles broke up in 1980, Don Henley said in an interview that they would play again together “when Hell freezes over.” 14 years later, the Eagles released their comeback album, Hell Freezes Over.
v1kQB TIL that the first countries to elect females as the head of government were in Asia - Sri Lanka in 1960, India in 1966, and Israel in 1969. The first European country to elect a female head of government was the United Kingdom, in 1979