› added 11 years ago

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TIL Beethoven actually intended many of his most famous pieces (including the 5th Symphony) to be played much faster than they are generally always played. So fast, in fact, that many professional orchestras are unable to successfully play them.

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9yJm TIL Elvis Presley flew to Denver and back one night just to pick up a Fool’s Gold Loaf: an 8,000 calorie sandwich made from a hollowed out loaf filled with an entire jar of peanut butter, one jar of jelly, and a pound of bacon.
a8DvZ TIL That European settlers introduced the possum from Australia into New Zealand to establish a population for hunting purposes in the 1850's, after awhile the population sky rocketed up to 70 million at one point and are considered a destructive pest in New Zealand today.
V7QZ TIL PETA’s Virginia shelter rescued 1,606 cats and 1,025 dogs last year. Of those animals, 95.64% of the cats and nearly 77% of the dogs were euthanized.
wLDoY TIL Gambler's fallacy, the erroneous belief that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future. In 1913, in a game of roulette, the ball fell in black 26 times in a row, the probability of the sequence is 1 in 66.6 million.
45vo TIL that in 1990 a wrongly-installed windscreen on BA Flight 5390 fell out, causing the plane’s cockpit to decompress and its captain to be pulled halfway out of the aircraft at over 17,000 feet. The crew held on to the captain’s body fearing it get sucked into the engine. The captain survived.