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TIL the chemical reaction in glow sticks was discovered by Dr. Edwin Chandross in 1962, but he had no idea the "chemiluminescent" objects were popular at music shows until a Vice interview in 2013. "Is that so?" he said. "Maybe my granddaughter will think I'm cool now."

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e0nbE TIL it is believed that one of the reasons for the paranoia and bizarre behavior that led to the Salem Witch Trials was caused because of a fungus, Ergot, which grows on rye plants and is a close cousin of LSD. Mistaking it for large rye grain, Salem villagers ground it into their bread and ate it.
9Y0ND TIL that the Apollo astronauts distinctive hopping on the moon wasn't due to the low gravity, it was because their space suits were inflexible.
d8XRd TIL in 1941, the world's largest seed bank (created by botanist Nikolai Vavilov) was housed in Leningrad. As the Germans surrounded the city causing massive starvation, Vavilov's scientists refused to eat from the collection, slowly dying of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants.
Y7QkW TIL that Piroska Jancsó-Ladányi (January 15, 1934 – December 12, 1954) was a Hungarian serial killer who murdered five teenage girls in Törökszentmiklós between 1953 and 1954 to satisfy her sexual urges. She was hanged in 1954 and remains one of Hungary’s most infamous killers.
4XAja TIL of Chad Varah—a priest who started the first suicide hotline in 1953 after the first funeral he conducted early in his career was for a 14-year-old girl who took her own life after having no one to talk to when her first period came and believed she’d contracted an STD.