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TIL A huge block of marble lay neglected in a Florence churchyard for 25 years after two sculptors had already tried and failed to turn it into a sculpture. Michelangelo took the deteriorated marble and created the Statue of David.

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Wk58d TIL of Ghulam Dastagir, a Stationmaster who refused to leave his post during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, & prevented any trains from stopping at the station, saving thousands of lives even as his colleagues were dead and he himself spent 2 decades in and out of hospital due to long exposure to the Gas
gZdb TIL the Titanic will be reduced to a rust stain in an estimated 15-20 years due to a metal eating bacteria.
XEZLj TIL: Beethoven was not a prodigy as Mozart was and had shown no special abilities or intelligence in his childhood. Even later in his twenties, when he moved to Vienna he had a late start, no report from his early days mentioning him as unique talent or a possible successor of Mozart, Haydn.
rNOJM TIL the samurai sword, invented a millennium ago, was a marvel of beauty and engineering. The katana’s two different types of steel gave it optimum qualities to pierce and slash making it a highly versatile weapon in battle.
ANLva TIL that in 1947 a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison mutated Penicillium Roqueforti (blue cheese mold), accidentally creating a colorless "blue" cheese. The cheese made from this mutated mold was dubbed Nuworld cheese, and is still being produced for sale in small quantities.