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TIL after making some anti-Semitic comments, Lou Reed was asked if he was Jewish, to which he replied: “Of course, aren’t all the best people?” However, when asked by journalist Lester Bangs about how his songs relate to being Jewish, Reed contrarily answered that he didn’t know any Jewish people.

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gMjgW TIL in 1954, when the Swanson TV dinner was first sold in retail outlets, it was controversial: men wrote to the company complaining that they preferred their wives cook from scratch like their mothers did as opposed to the "just heat and serve" meal.
lonOG TIL that Plato believed that love between friends encouraged a higher level of consciousness and intimacy than physical love, and should be more highly regarded (hence “platonic” relationships).
xn4w TIL that one of the least-remembered US Presidents, Millard Fillmore, was effectively sold as a child by his destitute father into a kind of indentured servitude (bordering on child slavery). He eventually bought himself from his master for $30 and walked 100 miles to his home at age 14
OoQkX TIL In 1937, Angelo Hays was declared dead and buried 3 days later. 2 days after that, an insurance investigation exhumed him and found him in a coma. He made a complete recovery. He later invented a coffin complete with upholstery, a food locker, chemical toilet, library, and radio transmitter.
x67ww TIL that in 1916, German spies sabotaged a US munitions plant in NYC resulting in one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history that caused 530 million in property damage, including damaging the Statue of Liberty, and was felt as far away as Philadelphia.