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TIL that slaves were forbidden from owning drums, as they were used to communicate. New Orleans was the only city where slaves could legally own them. Hundreds of slaves were allowed to gather each Sunday to trade, sing, dance, and play music. This led to the birth of Jazz.

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l7p8K TIL the famous study about heartless husbands, which found men were highly likely to divorce their sick wives after serious diagnoses, was subsequently responsibly retracted by authors because of a statistical error. In the corrected model, the difference between divorce rates was minimal.
j61bQ TIL: Robin Williams autopsy revealed he had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout his entire brain and brainstem from Lewy body disease (LBD)
VM0EZ TIL out of the 3 volunteers who went in 1986 on a suicide mission to open the valves of the pool at the Chernobyl plant 2 are actually still alive
R5o6 TIL After conducting Symphony No. 9 stone deaf, Beethoven had to be physically turned around to see the audience applaud him (some waved handkerchiefs so he could visibly see their ovations)
4Xp5a TIL Musician James McCartney (only son of Paul McCartney) was first inspired to play the guitar after seeing Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, not by his father or The Beatles.