› added 11 years ago

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TIL the 1904 Olympic marathon ‘winner’ cheated by using a car, the second place finisher drank brandy mixed with rat poison, another athlete was chased off course by dogs, and another ate a rotten apple during the run.

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d88LE TIL of Battle of Nations, an international, full-contact, historical medieval competition where people wear real armor and fight with real weapons every year in a castle in Europe
b97GZ TIL a riddle from 1688 goes. "If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone?" In 2003 the riddle was solved when five people had their sight restored though surgery. They could not.
QbNL TIL when Queen wanted to release Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975, various executives suggested to them that, at 5 minutes and 55 seconds, it was too long and would never be a hit.
dArB TIL that there are 62 pieces of Lego for every person on Earth.
R7Ng9 TIL The Inuit people of northern Greenland had many metal knives and tools despite having no mines or smelting: they used enormous iron meteorites for their metal which American explorer Robert E. Peary ultimately stole.