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TIL There was a proposal to make Ottawa's Rideau Street enclosed in a continuous glass-and-steel structure. The heated mall was expected to allow pedestrians to shop in comfort year-round. However, the downside was that it attracted large numbers of vagrants and late-night drinkers

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b6EVj TIL Franklin Pierce, the 14th US president, believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity, so much that he alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.
7AK7 TIL: The Beatles song “I am the Walrus” was written after John learned the English master in his former high school was making the class analyze lyrics from Beatles songs. In response, he wrote the most confusing lyrics he could, saying, “Let the fuckers work that one out.”
E1850 TIL Of Alfred Kroeber who studied a man he named Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe who walked into the modern world in 1911. In Ishi's culture, knowing ones name gives you power over them, so Ishi just means Man. This idea of magic in naming things influenced Kroeber's daughter Ursula Le Guin.
w5GW TIL: A 15 year old found a cheap and speedy way to detect pancreatic cancer. He was denied 199 times before someone gave him a chance.
X0DDj TIL during the Apollo 16 lunar mission in 1972, the crew brought a lunar rock first collected by Apollo 12 in 1969 BACK to the moon as part of a magnetic field experiment. The rock ended up travelling back and forth between moon and Earth twice.