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TIL the reason why the music genre "shoegazing" got its name is that the performers would stand in a detached state with their heads down. It was because the heavy use of effects pedals meant the musicians had to observe the pedals' readouts.

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JYexl TIL that there are parts of the US in which adult illiteracy is over 30%
6EAB8 TIL that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke a creole language associated with the descendants of slaves called Gullah as his first-language and that his relative silence on the Court is due in part to self-consciousness from being teased about the way he spoke as a child in rural Georgia.
yVQWp TIL about Cabeza de Vaca, one of four survivors out of 400 people of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across what is now the US Southwest, he became a trader and faith healer to various Native American tribes before reconnecting with Spanish civilization in Mexico in 1536
1OrD TIL that Vasily Zaytsev, a Soviet sniper with over 242 confirmed kills and 500 rumoured kills, became so good at shooting due to his peasant childhood; his family was too poor to afford many bullets, and hence he was forced to learn to take one shot per animal.
oBOZR TIL of Operation Bloodstone, a CIA project to recruit former Nazis and collaborators to conduct "psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage, [...] assassination, target capture and rescue". Many hired agents were high ranking Nazis, some of which had committed crimes against humanity.