› added 5 years ago

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TIL NHL legend Maurice Richard was so beloved in Canada that he was named one of the inaugural members of the Order of Canada, had a short story written about him adapted into an animated film by the National Film Board, and was the first non-politician to be given a state funeral.

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XdKk TIL pure water does not conduct electricity and is an excellent electrical insulator.
LxmV TIL in 2004 van Gogh’s great-grandnephew, Theo, was murdered for making a film about violence against women in Islam. He was shot more than 8 times, cut in the throat to decapitate him, stabbed in the chest and stabbed with another knife attaching a note that threatened Western countries & Jews.
1A9V TIL That dinosaur erotica exists (with actual titles like “Ravished By The Triceratops”) and is apparently pretty profitable
9YQZm TIL that the word "meme" was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads.
9Y9mX TIL in 1928, the founder of Juilliard overheard an audition of someone improvising on a Rachmaninoff classic. Appalled, he went to confront the blasphemer, but found an 8yo Black girl (Hazel Scott), whose hands were too small to hit all the right keys. She was deemed a prodigy & accepted immediately