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TIL a concert grand piano has to resist 30 tons of pressure being put on it by the tensioned piano wires

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wLEpP TIL in the 1820s a Cherokee named Sequoyah, impressed by European written languages, invented a writing system with 85 characters that was considered superior to the English alphabet. The Cherokee syllabary could be learned in a few weeks and by 1825 the majority of Cherokees could read and write.
ne6OG TIL when you involuntarily yell over loud noise, that’s an example of the Lombard effect (the involuntary tendency of speakers to increase their vocal effort when speaking in loud noise to enhance the audibility of their voice).
mGly TIL That when Soviet Archaeologists opened the Mongol conqueror Timor’s tomb, they found a message on the inside saying ‘Whosoever Disturbs My Tomb Will Unleash an Invader More Terrible than I.’ On that very same day, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
PYvOn TIL It took more than 70 years to complete the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Originally, the Philological Society predicted that the dictionary would take about 10 years to complete. Twenty-seven years later, the editors had successfully reached the word ant.
5YgLp TIL that in the 1930s Austria established its own Fascist dictatorship with its own version of the Swastika whose leader, Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated on Hitler's orders in 1934.