› added 4 years ago

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TIL that there is a beetle and a spider named after Leonardo DiCaprio to acknowledge his work in promoting environmental awareness

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VBOgB TIL that the population of New York City more than doubled (127% increase) between 1890 and 1900
16bM7 TIL a medieval chess piece orginally bought for £5 in 1964, then kept in a drawer for decades, sold for £735K in 2019. It was discovered the warder (equivalent to a rook) is one of the five major pieces (1 knight, 4 warders) missing from the 1831 Lewis chessman hoard of four 12th century chess sets.
JYd7m TIL Sculptor Michelangelo had no experience painting frescoes and did not consider himself a painter when he reluctantly took the commission for the Sistine Chapel. He even wrote a poem about how much he hated doing it.
j6ebp TIL that the us military trained pilots over the Great Lakes.
m1ODM TIL that from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, many U.S. drug stores, grocery stores, and department stores had self-service tube testers in which customers could test vacuum tubes that were pulled from their malfunctioning electronic devices.