› added 11 years ago

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TIL the song “Happy Birthday” is no longer in copyright and Warner Music has been sued for hundreds of millions of dollars in improperly collected royalties

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X0WQ TIL Thomas Edison had his people steal a copy of A trip to the Moon (1902, listed as the 82nd best movie ever made) and made a fortune from it while the creator and founder of modern cinema Georges Méliès who planned on taking it to America ended up bankrupt shortly after.
GY654 TIL a lawsuit between Gilbert O'Sullivan and Biz Markie over a sampling of "Alone Again" led to the requirement of licensing and fees to sample parts of song, which in turn made it prohibitively expensive to sample multiple songs into a new piece, which had been a common practice in hip hop
64jZ TIL after X-raying a prayer book from the 13th century scientists discovered the pages had readable traces of an unknown work by Archimedes. The remarkable work book contained treatises on infinity written 2,000 years before anyone else thought up the concept.
5Y95Q TIL that Pluto was discovered by a 23 year old farmboy with no degree in astronomy who spent a year comparing photographs of the night sky, searching for a "star" that changed positions. He would later earn his Masters degree and teach at New Mexico State
vPb1K TIL professional wrestler Haku is widely considered by many in the industry to be the toughest and greatest legitimate fighter in the industry. In one encounter, a drunk fan called wrestling fake and pushed Haku, who bit his nose off in response