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TIL that to avoid the censure of his father, a railroad worker who disapproved of poets, the teenage writer Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto wrote and published poetry under a pseudonym: Pablo Neruda. He would later legally adopt the name and go on to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

egO4 TIL The Ancient Irish respected their dogs so much that if a Warrior or King gained the loyalty of a hound they would be given the prefix “Cu” meaning “Hound” added on before their own name to show others they were worthy of the respect and loyalty of a dog.
Oo1o7 TIL of John Brown. An abolitionist who was the first person executed for treason in the US for leading a slave rebellion in 1859. His actions and hanging helped ignite the start of the Civil War.
nnEB TIL that fungi are the only organism known to cause mass extinction– and that they’ve already begun to eradicate frogs, fishes, bees, and most ominously, bats– a mammal. Valley Fever, now spreading unchecked throughout the American southwest, is a fungal infection….
XlnR TIL that, following the introduction of the double-blade razor, the first-ever episode of “Saturday Night Live” featured a fake advertisement for a triple-blade razor, with the slogan: “Because you’ll believe anything.”
9Y8RX TIL you rarely hear Happy Birthday on TV because the song was copyrighted from 1935 to 2014. In 2014 Time Warner paid 14 million to release the song to the public domain rather than face a lawsuit over their aggressive ownership of it which was netting them 2 million a year.