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TIL that in 1572, Tycho Brahe spotted a "new star" that briefly outshone Venus and was seen in daylight. This supernova was exploding around 9,000 light-years away, 300 million times brighter than the Sun, and visible naked-eye for 16 months. It shattered medieval ideas that the stars never change.

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via reddit.com

XwR8 TIL: Spain Cheated in the 2000 Summer Paralympics, 10 of the 12 players on their roster “were encouraged to pretend to be stupid” and had no mental disability.
YLDG TIL the original Super Mario Bros 2 game was too hard and unpopular overseas, so Nintendo redeveloped an existing Japanese game (Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic) and turned it into what we know as Super Mario Bros 2, hence the weird, new characters and game play.
XEXGX TIL in Jewish ritual law, the impurity of corpses can only be cleansed by the ashes of a red heifer sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem. But since there is no Temple right now, the cleansing is impossible. In some interpretations of the law, all Jews are assumed to carry the impurity.
yQBew TIL, that one of the greatest composers in the world, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, was homosexual and that the Soviet and Russian government have hidden his letters that were telling about his sexual desiers until 1995 from the public. More but not all letters were published in later in 2009.
OG9X4 TIL nearly 8 in 10 Americans grew up with at least 1 sibling, making siblings a more ubiquitous presence in early life than fathers.