this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026

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Today I Learned

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TIL that Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic The Gathering, is the great great grandson of President James Garfield. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/til@lemmy.world

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[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 65 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Fun James Garfield trivia: he wrote a proof of the Pythagorean theorem.

Notable wiki editor burn: "Garfield is thus far the only President of the United States to have contributed anything original to mathematics."

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I looked up Garfield, he was the second US president assassinate and he wasn’t president a year.

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[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Yep. After Lincoln made it famous people began to see presidential assassination as rather passe. And he loses out on the shortest tenure record to Harrison, so nobody remembers poor Garfield for much other than his mathematical contributions. Or contribution, singular.

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[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

And the reason Garfield was shot was complete nonsense. There's a great video on it.

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

Haha!!

Harrison’s was shorter.. Off to wikipedia I go.

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[–] missphant@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 point 2 days ago

At least he got a 1 hour EmpLemon video out of it.

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[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Netflix's Death by Lightning introduced me to history I probably should've learned as a kid but I never paid attention to. I watched the first episode and ended up spoiling the rest of the show for myself by going down a wikipedia rabbit hole.

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

That has Mathew Mcfadden and Michael Shannon doesn’t it? That has been on my watch list forever and I need to check it out!

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[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

That's the one. Michael Shannon is fantastic. First took note of him in Take Shelter, and since then, if I see his name on something I watch it. He's why I watched Death by Lightning. He did great.

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