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TIL NPR radio host Ira Glass, who has done the show "This American Life" since 1996, received a raise from $170,000 to $278,000 in 2013. Glass said this raise was "unseemly" and asked it to be lowered to $146,000.

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OjJ7 TIL that Mark Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go out with it”, too. He died the day after the comet returned.
EgJax TIL The word "Emoji" does not derive from the word "Emotion", but is a combination of the Japanese words for "picture" (絵, pronounced "e") and "character" (文字, pronounced "moji")
l7pbB TIL Monasteries used to distill a compound called "uisge beatha" (pronounced uska beg) which means "water of life" in Gaelic. After it got popularized, people started calling it solely "uska", which led to its final form in present, whiskey.
Er0d TIL During WW2, captured German officers, sent to Britain as POWs, lived in luxury in Trent Park. This was done to make them feel relaxed. However, they were being listened to by 100 ‘listeners’. They revealed secrets about the holocaust, events in Berlin, Hitlers madness and V2 rocket bases.
5e8Q TIL Jim Carrey’s family was so poor that he quit school at 15 to support them by working as a janitor. He carried a baseball bat in his janitor’s cart because, “[he] was so angry [he] just wanted to beat the heck out of something.”