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TIL The Legend of the Christmas Spider is an Eastern European folktale explaining tinsel on Christmas trees. A poor widow could not afford to decorate her tree. A spider covered it in cobwebs overnight. Morning sunlight turned the webs into gold and silver. They never lived in poverty again.

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d88W9 TIL in 1997, comedian Dana Carvey underwent heart bypass surgery for a blocked coronary artery, but the surgeon operated on the wrong artery. Carvey, later suffering from angina pectoris, sued for medical malpractice and was awarded millions in damages. He donated the money to charity.
5LMk TIL that Archimedes of Syracuse discovered the volume and surface area of a sphere 1800 years before calculus was invented by Newton. He also estimated the value of pi to be 3.14185- that’s over 99.9% accurate.
rRoQ0 TIL A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess was written over a period of three weeks after he was misdiagnosed with brain cancer and given a year to live.He decided to spend that year writing five novels to provide for his wife after his death. Ironically, he outlived her.
ANRKa TIL Amanita phalloides (also known as death cap) is the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human. It is also the deadliest mushroom worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year.
oMlo TIL that the color orange was named after the orange fruit. Up until the 1500’s, the color was referred to as “saffron” or simply “yellow-red.”