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TIL Astronomer Edward Barnard discovered Amalthea, the fifth satellite of Jupiter, using an eyepiece that yielded 520x on the 36-inch Lick Observatory telescope. Barnard observed Saturn's moon at 2,600x at the highest but 1000x power is enough to show a disk

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GNJj TIL The front room of a house was often used to display the dead for funerals and would often be called the Death Room. As this practice fell out of favor, the name of this room changed to “Living Room”
p4g8 TIL that Lord Walter Rothschild, an immensely wealthy banker and zoologist, drove a carriage harnessed to six zebras regularly to prove that zebras could be tamed.
arjb TIL Mao Zedong ordered the people of China to kill sparrows because they steal grain. Since sparrows also eat insects, their absence caused a locust epidemic that ravaged crops and killed millions of people.
VBl5m TIL the Harvard Corporation was founded in 1650 to govern Harvard University, and is the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere
P1p0E TIL that in the US bartenders/waiters can be sued by the patrons themselves if they end up drunk and getting into trouble