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TIL Dick Tuck, a political consultant and prankster, pulled many pranks on Richard Nixon. One included renting a huge auditorium for Nixon to speak but inviting only a few guests. He also hired a pregnant black woman to walk around in a white neighborhood with a sign reading: “Nixon’s the one!”

neGkP TIL about the "Murder Castle", a building owned by the serial killer H. H. Holmes. This complicated building included maze-like hallways, seemingly leading to nowhere airtight rooms used as elaborate torture rooms, acid vats a crematorium and more. It is suspected that Holmes had around 200 victims.
ZlGv TIL that Tom Waits was arrested in 1977 outside of a coffee shop in Los Angeles. Waits and a friend were trying to stop some men from bullying other patrons. The men were plainclothes police officers, and Waits and his friend were arrested for disturbing the peace.
LkNwQ TIL In 2009, Stephen Hawking threw a party at the University of Cambridge, complete with balloons, hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne. Just as expected, nobody showed up because he only sent out invitations after his party was over. It was, he said, "a welcome reception for future time travelers,".
W7o8B TIL Christiaan Huygens was one of the first astronomers to apply mathematical principles to the design of optics rather than trial and error, and his telescope could study Saturn's ring system. The Huygenian eyepiece he invented in the 17th century is still in use today
mxBDE TIL That my country Canada interred over 90% of Japanese Canadians residing in British Columbia during WWII. The majority of these 22,000 people were Canadian by birth. Measures were paid for in part by seizure and sale of the property of those interred and were not lifted until 1949.