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TIL in 1970, Sly and the Family Stone cancelled 26 of their 80 concerts and numerous others started late. In January 1975, the band booked itself at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The music hall was only one-eighth occupied, and Stone had to scrape together money to return home.

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nWJx7 TIL that in olympic wrestling, ref can give wrestler a penalty, if they decide that the wrestler is giving "less than total effort". "Both wrestlers are required to always give an all-out effort. Wrestlers showing less than total effort are considered "passive.""
9WAM TIL In ancient Phoenician Sardinia, whenever elderly people were no longer able to support themselves, they were given a neurotoxic plant called “sardonic herb” and thrown off of a cliff. It is the source of the term “sardonic grin” because of the facial expression the plant caused following death.
1aVrX TIL 40 years before James Cameron's "Avatar" was released, the "Noon Universe" Russian sci-fi novels were published, set on a forest planet called Pandora in the 22nd century, inhabited by humanoids called Nave (compared to the "Na'vi" in Avatar).
wlnM TIL: President Andrew Jackson was involved in as many as 100 duels. He was shot in the chest in 1806 and took a bullet in the arm in a bar fight with Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton in 1813. Most were to defend his wife’s honor.
xV6Ww TIL Matthew McConaughey's brother, Rooster McConaughey, named his son Miller Lyte and got free beer for a year