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TIL the inventor of the computer, Charles Babbage, once baked himself in an oven at 265⁰F for 4 minutes just to see what would happen. He followed this up by asking to be lowered in to Mount Vesuvius.

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awPXM TIL that the Alfred, formally known as the Black Prince, became the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag; the precursor to the Stars and Stripes that we know today. The flag was hoisted on the Delaware River by John Paul Jones and this event was documented in letters to Congress
Eero TIL Kanye West liked the score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so much that he hired Jon Brion to produce and write Late Registration with him – even though Brion had no hip-hop experience.
W7ZrY TIL that legal poppy farmers in Tasmania couldn't figure out why they kept getting crop circles until it was revealed wallabies were breaking in to eat the bulbs to get high then running around in circles trampling the flowers
7r1b7 TIL that in 1965, 21 yr old Al Kooper bluffed his way into the studio where Bob Dylan was recording Highway 61 Revisited. Although he didn't know how to play the Hammond organ or even turn it on, his improvised intro & off the beat riffs became the signature groove & sound of "Like A Rolling Stone".
nxY TIL that HeLa, the oldest human cell line used in scientific research, is derived from cervical cancer cells of a patient in 1951 and is so self-persistent that it is considered by some to be its own species.