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TIL that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations was organized by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865

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JADm TIL 70 years ago today, the Polish attacked the Nazis to liberate their capital. During the 9 week rebellion that followed, more than 200,000 died, mostly civilians. Now, every August first, the entire city of Warsaw stands still for a full minute to commemorate their fallen.
JYm6j TIL Michelangelo wrote a poem about how much he hated painting the Sistine Chapel
QN0be TIL the 1985 James Bond film A View To A Kill is regarded as the first-time snowboarding appeared in a mainstream film and is credited with helping to popularise the then-young sport.
E1lAX TIL that the band Guster tried to thwart "pirates" on Napster by uploading a version of their album Keep It Together that replaced real vocals with fake cat meows.
xj6b TIL That on the final Mercury Flight, astronaut Gordo Cooper’s capsule lost all power. He had to manually bypass the control system to fire the retro rockets and drogue chute and use his wrist watch for time and stars for reference points. It was the most accurate landing to that point in history.