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32

TIL about the Gaelic Celtic tradition of Keening, a verbal singing and mourning for the dead

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b98Jp TIL Yakisugi (burnt cypress) is a traditional Japanese building material. Made by heating cypress boards until the cellulose burns off, it is more fireproof, waterproof, and resistant to insects than ordinary wood
oBm1L TIL that the character Oscar the Grouch has gone on record as being a Canadian, though he tries to keep his Canadian identity a secret, because he doesn't want people to like him.
4XQJ5 TIL that the Samurai fled to California and founded a colony in 1869. The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony is believed to be the first permanent settlement and the only settlement by samurai outside of Japan. It was founded by Japanese (mainly Samurai) immigrants fleeing the Samurai's disbanding.
7LdL TIL The Cult of Pythagoras didn’t eat beans because they thought you lose your soul when you fart.
a8OnA TIL that David Cox and Steven Zucker, two graduate students from Princeton, developed an algorithm for the intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces and named it the Cox-Zucker machine.