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TIL in 1917, renowned journalist Emily Hutchings published a novel she claimed the deceased Mark Twain had dictated to her via Ouija board; Twain's daughter sued, and a settlement stopped further publication and intended to destroy all copies (it didn't).

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4XrEg TIL that Weird Al Yankovic wrote the song "Yellow Snow" as a parody of Prince's "Purple Rain", but was not allowed to release it.
aed0 TIL that in medieval times it was common to have “2” sleeps per night. You would fall asleep for 4 to 5 hours, wake up for 2 hours or so and fall back to sleep for another 3 to 4. It’s been suggested that we may have evolved this way to tend to the fire in order to keep us warm and safe.
nbdo TIL African-American physicist and mathematician Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s first space flight by hand. When NASA used computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify its numbers.
9LAr TIL: A man installed a Buddha statue in his crime ridden neighborhood and overall crime dropped 82%.
lE1B TIL that Steve Jobs had a relatively treatable type of cancer, however, he pursued pseudo-medicine for 9 months, leading to his death