› added 9 years ago

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TIL a high school kid once wrote 150 famous novelists to ask if they intentionally put symbolism in their work. 75 authors responded, including Bradbury, Asimov, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, and Updike.

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MVpm TIL that Festivus was created in 1966 by Readers Digest editor, Dan O’Keefe. It marked his first date with his wife. Years later his son, Daniel O'Keefe, became a writer on Seinfeld and Festivus became what we know it to be now.
NorJ TIL the 1902 Saint-Pierre Volcano eruption killed all 35,000 people in the town except one man who survived because he was the worst prisoner and lived in a solitary confinement cell.
EgMdd TIL The shipwreck of M/S Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea on September 28, 1994 and caused 852 deaths, is only about 80 meters below sea level. If you were to put the ship on her transom with the bow pointing to the sky, about half of the ship would be above the surface of the water.
vNWK TIL a group advocating for people who are afraid to urinate in public asked DirecTV to pull its commercials starring Rob Lowe and an awkward alter ego “Painfully awkward Rob Lowe.”
Bg49b TIL wild lions in west and central Africa are more closely related to Asiatic lions in India than to those found in southern and east Africa.