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TIL Beethoven won a sight reading piano competition by turning his sheet music upside down, playing it, then improvising on one of its themes for thirty minutes. His opponent, Daniel Steibelt, never returned to challenge him again.

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EYxX TIL the FBI estimates that at any given time, there are from 35 to 50 active serial killers in the U.S.
6ELLY TIL the studio tapes for Billy Joel's first album, 'Cold Spring Harbor,' were transferred to vinyl at a higher speed which made both the music and Joel’s voice sound higher-pitched than normal
E1Gnw TIL that Alan Turing once bought 150lbs of silver, but didn't trust banks so he buried it in the woods instead. After the price of silver had almost doubled, he went to dig it up, but could no longer find it.
wo5OY TIL a Polish farmer named Franciszek Honiok is considered the first victim of World War II after being murdered on the evening of 31 August 1939 as part of a Nazi plot to provide a justification for the invasion of Poland.
ZpmnQ TIL that a production flaw meant CD's manufactured by the UK branch of Philips and Dupont Optical (PDO) between 1988 and 1993 would be able to react with their own paper booklets and be rendered unreadable.