› added 11 months ago

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TIL a book club in California spent 28 years reading Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, beginning in 1995 and finishing in October 2023. At first the club read two pages per month, however it eventually slowed to just one page per month. In November, the group started the book again.

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ZbjR TIL after Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command in the Korean War in 1951, Emperor Hirohito visited him to offer his condolences. It was the first time a Japanese Emperor had ever visited a foreigner who was not a diplomat or royalty
N1Oe TIL that when a Soviet research ship went to check on sunken Soviet submarine K-219 in 1988, it found several of the submarine’s missile silo hatches had been forced open, and the missiles, along with their nuclear warheads, were gone.
5AmQ TIL: The robot cop in futurama is named URL (pronounced Earl)
7rjNx TIL that the Ancient Egyptian text Debate Between a Man and His Soul is about a man deeply unhappy with life without the will to continue to live, saying one cannot find friends anymore and that nobody is good anymore. It is considered the oldest text on depression. It ends on a positive note.
KOAXa TIL John F Kennedy once had a 2 year long affair with beauty queen and actress Inga Arvad, even coming very close to marrying her. The relationship ended when Joe Kennedy discovered Ms Arvad had another man in her life- the one and only Adolf Hitler- and was under FBI surveillance as a result.