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TIL: Many of the most popular Christmas songs in America were written by Jewish writers

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4XWRN TIL there was a mission to launch an ISRO astronaut, in one of the NASA Space shuttles in 1986, which got cancelled following the challenges disaster.
69BQm TIL In the 1900s, German was the dominant language for science (thanks to Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg and others). It was only until mid 1990s that English firmly established itself as the main language.
0wNlp TIL in 1967 a man appeared on Jeopardy! intending to win just enough money to buy an engagement ring. He won that amount halfway through and kept his mouth shut from there on. To prevent a recurrence, the rules were changed shortly thereafter, allowing only the winner to keep all his/her winnings.
grRV7 TIL that in addition to his successful "The Thin Man" novel, which spawned six films, Dashiell Hammett ALSO created (or at least had attributed to him) another character called "The Fat Man", which was the basis for a successful radio show and a film.
jNoAQ TIL that Aldous Huxley's descriptions of the effects of alcohol on fetuses in Brave New World predate the scientific recognition of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome by more than four decades.