› added 7 years ago

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TIL that Carl Linnaeus was invited by the mayor of Hamburg to see his taxidermied 7-headed hydra. Linnaeus quickly determined it was a fake held together with glue, and had to flee the city after he publicly said so, ruining the mayor's hopes of selling it for a large fortune.

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6EZlW TIL Norm MacDonald's 1998 cult-classic film, Dirty Work, was based on a short-story "Vengeance Is Mine, Inc." by Roald Dahl.
0wgQp TIL that when the Panchen Lama (2nd in command to the Dalai Lama) died in 1989, the Tibetan Buddhists chose a six year old boy to replace him in accordance with tradition. The Chinese government was unhappy with the pick and abducted him. He hasn’t been heard from since.
RmV8 TIL the audio levels in recorded music have increased since the early 1990s with many experts saying it leads to reduced sound quality and listener enjoyment. This is known as the “Loudness War”.
VM1GB TIL that for 25 years, the Space Shuttle couldn't fly a mission over New Year's because the flight computers couldn't cope with the year changing. This was only fixed in 2007, four years before the fleet's retirement.
78MBx TIL that the Love Death & Robots episode Life Hutch is set in the same universe as the legendary The Outer Limits episode Demon With A Glass Hand. Both are set against the backdrop of Harlan Ellison's Earth-Kyba-War.