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TIL in 2006 a man bought a record, on a New York street for $0.75, that turned out to be an extremely rare 1966 Velvet Underground acetate; one of only two copies known to exist. He sold it at auction for $25,200.

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9wWVm TIL that the architect Rafael Viñoly was responsible for not just one, but two different buildings that thanks to their curved facade would turn into death rays when the sun shines on them.
eEX6 TIL Astronaut Ed Mitchell said of his experience on the moon in 1971: “From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”
m7Ov TIL that F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing he was a failure. Two years later 155,000 copies of ‘The Great Gatsby’ were shipped to WWII soldiers overseas, making it a widespread success. As of 1945 it’s believed to be a classic, selling 500,000 copies annually.
oZLL TIL that the Boo character in the Mario series is based on assistant director Takashi Tezuka’s sometimes ill-tempered wife; “it shrinks when Mario looks at it, but when Mario turns away, it will grow large and menacing”
awX1b TIL In 2016 several California Judges discarded over 66,000 arrest warrants because they felt it was unfair to arrest poor people simply because they could not pay fines.