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TIL that after H. P. Lovecraft's grandmother died when he was five years old, his mother and aunts began wearing black dresses around the house to mourn her. These "terrified" Lovecraft, and he began to have nightmares about them, which also involved some of the creatures he would later write about.

Yp7m7 Consider the autoclave, which scientists use to sterilize tools and which issues scalding steam to do so. Or consider the heat gun, which is used to dry glassware and to warm distillation devices. It can also ignite anything flammable that gets too close. Glass containers in a vacuum can implode, spraying shards everywhere. Centrifuge rotors can fail, causing explosions that throw shock waves throughout a lab filled with chemicals. Steel vessels built to contain liquids and gases at hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch can rupture, hurling metal at lab workers.
awbOo TIL: Bigfoot was created as a silly unplanned joke by Raymond L. Wallace in a Northern California logging camp in 1958. He used carved wooden feet to stomp the tracks of over-sized footprints. Even though his family have shed light on the prank lots of people still believe in Bigfoot's existence.
Zpw7v TIL that Chinese emperors' daily lives are not as free and as opulent as one may imagine.
OoeW4 TIL in 1911, 2 teenage boys with no money, no formal education or training, and no flying skills successfully fabricated, built, and flew a Bleriot aircraft. The aircraft was restored and flew again in 2012.
OGyE7 TIL that, in 1920s Paris, James Joyce would get drunk, start fights, and then hide behind Ernest Hemingway for protection, screaming, "Deal with him, Hemingway!"