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TIL: The tradition of popes taking up regal names started in year 533 with John II. He thought that his original name was inappropriate, since he was named after a pagan god (Mercurius)

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0wneL TIL that during the last few months for jazz legend John Coltrane’s death, he would take the sax out of his mouth during performances and start beating his chest, chanting, yodeling, and screaming. Sometimes Coltrane felt like even his sax couldn’t truly express what he wanted to say.
Zpxkp TIL about Roy Sullivan, a man who had been struck by lightning 7 times and had kept a water bucket in his car due to his hair catching fire after being struck. He used the bucket on multiple occasions.
groB7 TIL the first German woman with a Chemistry Ph.D. was married to Fritz Haber — a chemist known for supporting nearly half of the world's population's food supply through the synthesis of ammonia from the air and also for being the "father of chemical warfare." The latter would lead to her suicide.
kO0Qd TIL that a major breakthrough towards the invention of plastics was achieved due to a surge in the popularity of billiard, prompting producers of billiard balls to offer a reward of 10000$ to anyone who could come up with a viable alternative to ivory (which the balls were hitherto made of...)
Aw14 TIL After a Hong Kong gangster kidnapped the son of Asia’s richest man and extracted a US$130 million ransom, he phoned up the tycoon to ask advice on how to invest the money