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TIL that that an English journalist threw England into a moral panic about child prostitution and singularly got Parliament to raise the age of consent to 16

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GYKA1 TIL that in 1996, as a loss-leading tactic, British supermarkets competed so heavily on the price of baked beans that one store decided to sell them for MINUS 2p. This period is referred to by economists as The Bean Wars.
Xger TIL in 1987 a former airline worker shot his boss mid-flight, causing the stewardess to tell the pilot “we have a problem”. The pilot asked “what kind of problem?”, and at that moment the man shot the stewardess dead and announced “I’m the problem” before murdering the pilots and crashing the plane
rRaM0 TIL Honey is the only food that never expires. The same honey that was buried with the pharaohs in Egypt is still considered ‘edible’ by scientists.
P1VMZ TIL heart cockles, heart-shaped clams, have shells with natural fibre-optic windows that channel sunlight to feed symbiotic algae while blocking UV rays. This 2024 discovery is the first known case of a living organism using bundled fibre optics.
GYXOg TIL the bomber cockpit in Dr. Strangelove was based on a B-29 cockpit because the real B-52 bombers were off limit to the film crew. It turned out to be so accurate that Stanley Kubrick feared that his research team had done their job illegally and that they're about to be investigated by the FBI.