› added 5 months ago

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TIL that Mozart's opera-writer, Lorenzo Da Ponte, also was a professor of Columbia University and ran a grocery store in Pennsylvania

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6ERZm TIL George Miller the director and co-creator of the Mad Max series has personally only won 1 Oscar award. Miller won the award for best animated feature for directing Happy Feet. He also directed the sequel to Babe, Babe: Pig in the City.
gaP4 TIL Christmas ham, originally a pagan tradition, was endorsed by the Catholic Church as a test of truthful conversion from Judaism.
neQGB TIL The Germans possessed the largest calibered rifled weapon ever used in combat. It was a railway mounted artillery gun that weighted 1.3 million kilograms (3 million pounds) and was capable of firing a 7,000kg (15,000lb) shell 47 kilometers (29 miles). It was destroyed by the Germans in 1945.
mxZDp TIL that before the new world was colonized, "corn" could refer to any edible plant-seed including millet, barley, rye, wheat, maize, or oats. English settlers had no word for maize, so they called it "Indian corn," and eventually just corn.
xVLnk TIL in 1989 96 people were killed at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England after they were crushed due to overcrowding. Although match attendees and hooliganism were first cited as the cause, a 2016 inquiry found the police to be at fault due to their mismanagement of the crowd.