› added 2 months ago

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TIL When painting the Mona Lisa over many months, "to keep his subject (Lisa Gherardini) relaxed and entertained, Da Vinci had six musicians to play for her and installed a musical fountain invented by himself. Different, beautiful works were read out loud and a white Persian cat and a greyhound ...

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R7kx8 TIL of the Kids For Cash Scandal. 2 judges that accepted money for increasing the population at 2 juvenile detention centers.
ANVG4 TIL in 1999, Trey Parker and Matt Stone fought Paramount to keep South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut rated “R.” Paramount manipulated them toward a PG-13 rating by staging a meeting where one exec pretended not to know PG-13 films usually earn more money
X0kKP TIL in 2017, a man of the Fipa tribe disrespected his mother, and was disciplined by his tribe in the "traditional" way: Whipped, immersed in cow manure, mocked with song, and fined 1 goat and some cornmeal
yRKp TIL - After Edison died Nikola Tesla wrote a negative obituary in the NYT - made fun of his hygiene and work ethic
BgOZr TIL that US law allows coins worth as little as one mill (1/10th of a cent) to be minted. Half-cent coins were minted until the 1850s, and some states issued mill tokens through the 1960s printed on tin, aluminum, plastic or paper.