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TIL almost 10% of all the concrete used in the WW2 German Atlantic Wall went on the fortification of the tiny Channel islands. The 1944 allied invasion of France simply ignored them, finally liberating them in May 1945.

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OGy84 TIL Queen Victoria had a Pekingese named Looty. Looty was stolen by Captain John Hart Dunne during the looting of Old Summer Palace near Beijing in 1890. He gifted her to Queen Victoria who named her Looty in reference to how she was acquired. Looty may have been the first Pekingese in England.
4v16 TIL for Yao Ming’s first game in Miami in 2002, the Heat gave out 8,000 fortune cookies as a promotion for the game. Yao did not take offense because he had never seen a fortune cookie in China and assumed it was an American invention.
mOry TIL 10 years ago iTunes launched on Windows, Steve Jobs was against this. However this launch paved the way for mass use of iPods > iPhones > iPads and mass migration to macs
d8X08 TIL the human brain remains half awake when sleeping in a new environment for the first time.
QJEZ6 TIL Women who have just listened to a love song are then twice as likely to give their phone number to an average looking man they’ve just met, with a view to going on a date.