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TIL one typo lead to the hire of a Geoffrey Tandy, a seaweed expert (cryptogamist) instead of a codebreaker (cryptogramist) during WW2, but the help of the seaweed expert accelerated the end of the war by 2 to 4 yrs saving millions of lives in the process

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Wk4LA TIL late medieval and early modern European cartographers believed that compasses consistently pointed North because there was a massive, perfectly circular island made of naturally-magnetic black rock at the North Pole.
8e9LZ TIL Russia and Pluto have almost the same area. Pluto has 17.7 million square kilometers while Russia has 17.3 million square kilometers.
XEX6P TIL that Mona Lisa painting has its own mailbox due to the large amount of love letters and flowers from admirers.
71lP TIL Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups, been jailed 40 times and survived four death sentences. He said that he felt at home in Africa as “food was scarce there too and everyone was also barefoot.
wrW1 TIL a convicted murderer was once granted a retrial after it was discovered that four members of the jury used a Ouija board to contact the victim before rendering their verdict.