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TIL a Chinese doctor spent 6 years illegally building a mountainous stone penthouse on top of a residential urban tower, “complete with boulders, trees, gardens, pools and ponds.”

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neYXB TIL that the common method for a spacecraft to shift between two orbits is called a Hohmann Transfer, and that the guy who calculated it (in 1925) was inspired by a science fiction book written in 1897, which gave a generally correct explanation of the concept of orbit trajectory
E1XXw TIL John Cage's 4'33" composition in which no instruments are played was partially inspired by a visit to a sound-proof chamber at Harvard University. Expecting to hear complete silence, he instead heard the sounds of his own body functioning—therefore realizing the "impossibility of silence."
GYVP5 TIL, that hagfish slime expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second, it is 100,000 times softer than Jell-O, and can fend off sharks
Q4QL TIL of an Auschwitz survivor who avoided doctors for 65 years after he was tested on by Auschwitz “doctor” Josef Mengele who, among other things, removed his kidney without anesthesia.
XEpJD TIL the Leningrad siege in WW2 has been classified as an genocide by some historians. American estimates the death toll was higher than combined american and British losses in the war, "The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."