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TIL that 1988 a chimpanzee received 400.000 votes in a mayoral election in Rio de Janeiro, coming in third place.

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n567 TIL while coming up with the character Aragorn, Tolkien initially conceptualized him as a Hobbit with wooden shoes, named “Trotter”. He would later be revealed to be Bilbo Baggins himself and the wooden shoes would turn out to be wooden feet as he was previously tortured by Sauron in Mordor.
LQllm TIL Andrew Johnson was one of 12 US Presidents to not graduate from college, and the only one to have "no formal schooling of any kind," and Abraham Lincoln, another of the 12, "had only about a year of formal schooling of any kind."
lo6y7 TIL that Congressman Leo Ryan, who was murdered while investigating Jonestown in 1978, had a record of directly looking into his constituents' concerns. As an assemblyman, he investigated the conditions of California prisons in 1970 by using a pseudonym to enter Folsom Prison as an inmate.
W77kX TIL that the saying "I'll sleep when I'm dead." may have first been said by the hero Gilgamesh. This conversation with the god Shamesh is from the Epic of Gilgamesh, captured on clay tablets 4000 years ago in the world's oldest written story. Jump down to the beginning of Part III
6ENbW TIL that Philadelphia outfielder Richie Ashburn once fouled off 14 pitches in a row. One foul bowl struck a woman, breaking her nose. While being carried off the field, she was struck by another foul ball hit by Richie during the same at-bat.