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TIL the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships have been held annually in Finland since 2000. The event was created by a Nokia employee to create awareness of the rise in toxicity levels in landfills and lakes caused by discarded phones. The farthest throw was in 2014 at 362.3ft (110.42m).

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mxWxP TIL Pyotr Tchaikovsky's family original last name was Chaika (Seagull) and it was of a distinguished Ukrainian Cossack background. Tchaikovsky wrote more than 30 compositions while in Ukraine, because - "I found a feeling of peace in my soul, which I couldn't find in Moscow and St Petersburg"
OmLa TIL that when the US Post Office began allowing people to mail large parcels, people would frequently mail their children to relatives for visits, as it was much cheaper than train tickets
OoXB7 TIL of Horse Diving, an attraction that was popular in the mid-1880s, in which a horse would dive into a pool of water, sometimes from as high as 60 feet
Rdj8 TIL: Beck’s 1992 hit “Loser” was a freestyle, the verses and chorus both being done on the first take.
neoeo TIL that in the 17th century, lacking chemical tests (and knowledge of disease transmission), Italian physician and autopsy pioneer Antonio Valsalva sometimes tasted the fluids he encountered in cadavers in an effort to better characterize them. "Gangrenous pus does not taste good," he wrote.