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TIL in 1933, a Japanese School Girl committed suicide by jumping into a volcanic crater on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre trend in Japan, and in the following year 944 other people (804 men and 140 women) leapt into the same crater.

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5V0ZR TIL that Windows in Japan has anime-girl mascots called OS-tans. Each of them has the surname of Madobe (窓辺, meaning By the Windowside) and a new one is created for each operating system starting with Windows 7. They have had various tie in products over the years in addition to promoting Windows OS
v18ZB TIL that along with the well known electronic surveillance state, there is also a deeply disturbing DNA surveillance state.
j4QM TIL the Beatles asked Stanley Kubrick to direct Lord of the Rings starring George as Gandalf, Paul as Frodo, Ringo as Sam, and John as Gollum but J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn’t let them do it.
bV40 TIL that Boeing plane models are always 7X7 not because of the Lucky number 7 but because the 700 division was in charge of transport aircraft after WWII. They started with 707 and kept the pattern from there.
5pRk TIL Federico da Montefeltro, fifteenth-century duke of Urbino, after having lost one eye in a tournament had his surgeons successfully amputate the bridge of his nose to widen his field of view.