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TIL that the term limelight (as in being in the limelight or spotlight) dates to a time when actual quicklime was burned to create an intense white light, which could then illuminate a stage

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79YL TIL Joseph Christopher (serial killer who murdered 12+) tried to check himself into a psychiatric center just weeks before he began his murder spree
W71ZY TIL as recently as the 1960s, information about bagels was not necessarily common knowledge. In 1960, The New York Times famously identified bagels for still-clueless readers as “an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.”
0Dej TIL that police in the UK give confiscated lights used for growing cannabis to sports teams with a large pitch/field to help grow the grass faster
Brmnr TIL in 1987 Iraq attacked the United States ship USS Stark and killed 37 sailors
l7RLr TIL Joan Robinson was denied Nobel Prize in Economics because she supported Mao's Economic Policies and of all 93 Economics Nobel Prize winners only 10 winners have been cited more widely than Robinson. Future Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen were the students of hers