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TIL The English vocabulary makes it very difficult to describe smells - we can only describe odors by comparing the smell to other things

wLRV1 TIL At age 24, George Ellery Hale revolutionized solar observations with his invention of the spectroheliograph, making it possible to photograph the sun's prominences in full daylight. A spectroheliograph can tune-in to gases such as hydrogen and calcium, and photograph specific solar details
wopx1 TIL that in 1671, a man named François Vatel was in charge of a 2000-person banquet to be held in the honor of Louis XIV. Vatel became distraught after a delivery of seafood was late, driving him to take his own life by running himself through his sword.
LQOGm TIL that the original version of ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’ written in 1884 had some seriously dark lyrics. The third to last verse reads, “In a churchyard near the canon where the myrtle doth entwine Grow the roses in their posies fertilized by Clementine.” Fourth to last is also quite dark.
jNRXj TIL about Nannie Doss, an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of eleven people between the 1920s and 1954. Also referred to as the "Giggling Granny". It was revealed that she had killed four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson, and a mother-in-law.
XoBE TIL that Nikola Tesla was voluntarily chaste, despite numerous women “vying for his affections… some even madly in love with him”, because he believed sex inhibited his abilities to think in a scientific manner