› added 3 years ago

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TIL a man claimed to steal a ghost from Ye Olde Man & Scythe in Bolton, England (a pub dating to 1251) and put it in a container on display at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art

yb9l TIL An old woman came up to Stephen King in a supermarket and said “You are the horror writer. I don’t read anything that you do. I just like things more genuine, like that Shawshank Redemption.”
6ExW7 TIL Composer Dvořák was inspired by African-American spirituals while in America and became convinced they were the future of American music. He told a student, "these beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them."
74rP TIL In 1994, cartoonist Mike Diana received a criminal conviction for obscenity for artwork in America, he wasn’t allowed to draw comics even for personal use or just for his house.
E1dZP TIL of the Surya Siddhanta, a book written in 4th century CE in India which describes the Earth’s diameter as 8000 miles (7928 by current standards) and the spherical shape of the earth also providing an accurate distance of the Moon from the earth before much before Galileo.
gMpQ8 TIL air conditioning is not popular in Europe. Only 5% of French homes are air-conditioned, 2% of German homes. Many travel sites include horror stories from Europeans describing how "unpleasant the United States is with its artificial cold, and reports of legions of Europeans who return ill."