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TIL Sam White, a Virginia Civil War collector, was killed in 2008 when a 140 year old high explosive cannonball he was restoring detonated in his driveway. The explosion was powerful enough to send chunks of shrapnel up to 1/4 mile away. There were 18 more cannonballs in his driveway at the time.

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JJwV TIL Google made a bid to to offer free wireless connection in San Francisco but Comcast and Verizon claimed “unfair competition”
9oZr TIL of “The Lipstick Killer”, William Heirens. In the 1940s he was convicted of killing 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan, Frances Brown and Josephine Ross. Heirens got his nickname because he wrote, “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself,” on Brown’s wall in lipstick.
4Xyob TIL in 1970 Nike offered Spencer Haywood either $100,000 or 10 percent of the company in exchange for promoting the company’s shoes. He chose the 100k over the stock that would be worth $8.6 billion today
loAer TIL that Soviet artillery launched an attack in 1942 to silence German guns specifically so that Shostakovich's 7th Symphony could premiere in Leningrad, even though the city was under siege and the musicians were starving to death, with three dying during rehearsals
VBwR4 TIL Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who started the persecution of Catholics, died in 1616 from over-eating tempura, a dish invented by Catholics during Lent while they were visiting Japan in 1543, which was the same year the Shogun had been born.