› added 9 months ago

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TIL that the silent fox is a hand signal used in parts of Europe and North America, and is mostly done in schools by teachers to calm down a loud classroom while usage has declined due to the gesture's similarity with the wolf salute, a Turkish nationalist gesture.

LkjOP TIL about Laconic phrase. When Philip II invaded southern Greece, he asked the Spartans whether he should come as friend or foe. They replied "Neither". Irate, he demanded they surrender, for if he came, they would be destroyed, prompting the response "If".
Y7GVZ TIL David Letterman once insulted Quentin Tarantino on his show, which made Tarantino call Letterman on the phone and threaten to come to NY to “kill” him. Letterman responded by offering to pay for his flight and have QT choose the method of battle. Tarantino agreed and chose “bats.”
1659W TIL that the backhanded blessing, "May you live in interesting times," is not actually a Chinese expression.
m1LjO TIL Beethoven kept his hearing loss a secret. He once wrote(but never send) a letter to his brother confessing it and explained that people mistakenly thought he was antisocial: he longed for human contact but became a recluse out of shame for his condition and all this made him contemplate suicide
JYkB8 TIL about ongoing Greek TV show "Light in The Tunnel" which among solving countless muder and missing cases in Greece, was added twice on the Guinness W.R.; once for finding 85 missing persons in the span of 75 episodes and again for finding a woman missing for 58 years, in just 10 minutes