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TIL that when the great ballerina Anna Pavlova contracted pneumonia, she was told she needed an operation that would leave her unable to dance. She replied, “If I can’t dance, then I would rather be dead.” She died shortly after.

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Qx6k TIL in 2001 a Columbine-style attack on a San Jose, CA community college was averted because a photo lab employee called the police when she was processing photos of the student posing with guns and homemade bombs. The police were waiting for him when he returned for his photos
5ojD TIL that neuroscientists have found that three seconds is the average duration of reciting a verse from a poem. This average duration holds true for poems all over the world and it is thought that it reflects the time it takes for the brain to integrate information.
oBAxr TIL John Romero's (co-creator of Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake) great-grandmother was a crime boss in the 1920's. Starting in Sonora, Mexico, she ran brothels and had an entire empire, controlling it well past the age of 60 (but didn't like to discuss age) and expanded it as far as Tucson, Arizona,
JYjbj TIL of the "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti", which is a psychiatric case-study that revolved around an experiment on a group of three patients with paranoid schizophrenia, each of whom believed they were literally Jesus Christ. They were brought together and "quarreled over who was holier".
nen9Y TIL it is easy to build a particle physics detector with just a fish tank, alcohol, paper and a hot water bottle. It will show cosmic rays that come from beyond our galaxy.