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TIL The opera house in Paris that the Phantom of the Opera is based on actually has an underground lake beneath it, just like in the book and musical.

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Y5Kr TIL Queen Marie Antoinette of France, largely viewed as haughty, callous and aloof at the time of her execution, used her last words to genuinely apologize to her executioner for accidentally stepping on his foot.
d8OAZ TIL despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, a 2013 article found that "psychic" Sylvia Browne was accurate in 0/33 of her predictions. For example, she had predicted that she would die at age 88; she died at age 77.
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a8GNA TIL that in his classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974), Mel Brooks named his character Gov. LePetomane after that of a 19th century French stage act of he same name. Flatulist Joseph Pujols combined the French verb péter ("to fart") with "mane" (maniac), loosely translating to "thefartmaniac".
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