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TIL that EA Poe's revenge story "The Cask of Amontillado" was part of a literary feud. Poe's rival Thomas Dunn English wrote a novel, "1844," featuring a drunken wife-abuser based on Poe; Poe, in turn, used details from that novel as the setting for his own murder fantasy about English.

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YpNov TIL the Hungarian physician Semmelweis proved that doctors washing their hands (not yet standard for mid-19th century Europe) greatly reduced hospital maternal mortality.As germs weren't discovered yet,he was ridiculed & later dismissed from his post. He mentally broke down & died in a mental asylum
P1PDL TIL When Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World, a reward was set for whoever first sighted land. Although one of his crewmen was first to report, Columbus falsely claimed he'd spotted land the previous night,thereby securing the reward for himself
N4dJ TIL - More people every year die by hippopotamus than by sharks, lions, and bears combined.
wxb6 TIL During the production of Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas came into work one day with a cough, and decided that it would be amusing to record it and use it on the new Episode III villain, General Grievous.
Dr4P TIL the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor were all demonstrated for the first time in what is the called the “mother of all demos” back in 1968