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TIL Jimmy Carr’s first 8 comedy specials form a sentence altogether: Live, Stand Up, Comedian, In Concert, Telling Jokes, Making People Laugh, Being Funny, Laughing & Joking

erv6 TIL that in the Siberian wilderness lives a woman named Agafia Laikov, a 70 old woman who is the last survivor of a ultra orthodox sect that fled Stalins prosecution and had no contact with outsiders for 40 years, not hearing about world war2 until the 1980’s
awmg9 TIL of Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, who was fishing off the coast of a remote Icelandic island inhabited by puffins when his ship capsized. He survived by swimming six hours in freezing water and walking several miles over volcanic rock. An average person survives in those conditions for about 75 minutes.
EgOdP TIL By the 1700s, aristocrats started eating tomatoes, but they were convinced the fruits were poisonous because people would die after eating them. In reality, the acidity from the tomatoes brought out the lead in their pewter plates, and they actually died of lead poisoning.
Qpyk TIL Rush vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee’s parents were Holocaust survivors. When Rush’s album 2112 was released, British magazine NME called the band Nazis due to the album’s lyrical allusions to Ayn Rand and Objectivism, deeply offending Geddy Lee.
R7XAa TIL that when Nichelle Nichols read for the part of a communications officer in 'Star Trek', she had a copy of Robert Ruark's 'Uhuru' with her. 'Uhuru' is Swahili for 'freedom', and when Gene Roddenberry heard what the word meant, he changed the character's name to 'Uhura'.