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TIL the studio tapes for Billy Joel's first album, 'Cold Spring Harbor,' were transferred to vinyl at a higher speed which made both the music and Joel’s voice sound higher-pitched than normal

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9wxEp TIL the soldier credited with killing John Wilkes Booth was a religious fanatic who cut his own balls off with a pair of scissors after being propositioned by a prostitute.
rRR4x TIL of Gino Bartali - champion Italian cyclist. During WWII, he cycled through Italy carrying messages for the Italian Resistance. He even smuggled Jews in a wagon with a secret compartment telling people it was part of his training.
epAjD TIL about Operation Abacus, a Canadian military operation in response to anticipated disruption due to the Y2K bug. It was intended as a contingency plan not just to coordinate the protection of government computers but also ensure social order if computing systems went down.
R5L87 TIL George Lucas wanted David Lynch to direct "Return of the Jedi"
rjj4 TIL of Ewen Cameron, who in the the 50s ran experiments on humans which involved giving several electric shocks a week, taping blacked out football helmets to their heads and playing repetitive messages in their ears for months at a time. Some patients apparently forgot who they were and how to talk