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TIL of Jon-Erik Hexum, an actor who was fooling around with a gun between delays on a TV set in 1984. He jokingly raised the gun to his head and said “Can you believe this crap?” before pulling the trigger and blowing his skull open with the explosion of the blank at close range.

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ymaw TIL there was a radio station in San Jose whose call letters were KOME. Their slogans included “Don’t touch that dial, it’s got KOME on it,” “You’ve got KOME… oozing out of your speakers,” and “Wake up with KOME in your ear.”
LQ0MQ TIL of a reporter who commissioned a paper from an academic ghostwriting agency to expose the "black market" for college assignments. Instead, the paper got an A-.
OomPa TIL that the Japanese, other than nobles or samurai class families, did not have surnames until 1868, when the government required commoners to adopt surnames. Names were chosen based on locations, occupations, or simply were made up, explaining the diversity in Japanese surnames (100,000+ present).
Z8aKR TIL that in 1856, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech so captivating that every single reporter forgot to take notes. There is no transcript of the speech in existence and the content could only be guessed at. The speech is known as “Lincoln’s Lost Speech”
vgB4 TIL the location of the oldest trees in the world are intentionally kept secret; the oldest known tree, Old Hara, was only known to the two dendrochronologists that cored and dated it, both of whom are now dead