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TIL: After WW2 the Japanese Admiral who invented the idea of kamikaze pilots committed ritual suicide, seppuku, as an apology. After cutting through his abdomen he refused the customary beheading, instead slowly dying over several hours.

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E1W8x TIL Memorial Day was started by former slaves as Decoration Day during the Civil War to celebrate emancipation and those who fought for justice. During the Jim Crow era, the holiday was whitewashed into the apolitical Memorial Day to erase the "divisive" issues of slavery and Black citizenship
VBnY0 TIL Sergei Federov, Alternate Captain of the Detroit Red Wings, dated 16 year old Anna Kournikova in 1996 after winning the Stanley Cup.
0wYgv TIL in an Aalto University study, participants were shown the movie Memento while making use of fMRI technology to see how the brain remembers and interprets events from clues. Unprecedented in the setup was that the subjects freely viewed the featured film in its entirety in the brain scanner.
j6e9j TIL that the Russian space program (from the 1960s to the 1980s) was the first to not only land a probe on another planet (Venus) but also photograph it
Meg1V TIL in 378BC, 30K Spartans invaded Thebes and were met by 20K Athenians deployed on an open hill. When the armies reached 200m apart, the Athenian general ordered his men to stand at ease (spears up, shields down) which they did with such precision and confidence as to cause the Spartans to retreat.