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TIL before whistles were introduced, hockey referees used a cowbell. They had to switch to whistles when fans started bringing their own cowbells to disrupt game play.

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woK0W TIL "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" is an example of an impossible task. The idiom dates at least to 1834, from the Workingman's Advocate: "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots.
lomBV TIL of "Psychogenic death" - when a person gives up on life mentally and dies usually within days. The phenomenon occurs when someone experiences a trauma they feel they cannot escape, and the person views death as their only option.
nGvo TIL Tom Delonge of Blink-182 is a firm believer in extraterrestrial life and once had his phone tapped by the government for coming into possession of 36 hours of Congressional testimonial footage of NASA’s secret space program.
j6E1M TIL that publications keep "advance obituaries" for notable individuals in order to have large well-written articles as quickly as possible. Not only do these regularly get published early in error, but P.T. Barnum requested his be published early so he could read them on his deathbed. They did.
R5Mm7 TIL that for the last 100-200 years, we’ve been living through the 6th (or 7th) recognized mass extinction event. Extinction rates are currently estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than before. The Holocene Extinction is a result of humans destroying habitats and killing too many animals.