DQrxe TIL about "Agloe, New York," a fake town created by mapmakers as a copyright trap to catch plagiarists. Decades later, a real store was built at that location and named "Agloe General Store" because the owners saw it on the map, effectively turning the fake town into a real one.
vPJYR TIL Hermès heir and largest individual shareholder discovered his entire $13B stake was stolen
J1ZB1 TIL in 2002, a 44-year-old street vendor won the grand prize on the Thai version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire thanks to a computer error led to the player being fed every right answers. The cable feeding her the answers on the computer screen was supposed to be hooked up to the host's computer.
pYKv8 TIL A 2009 study by Sonoma State University found that the movie Sideways (2004) slowed the growth in Merlot sales volume and caused its price to fall, but the film's main effect on the U.S. wine industry was a rise in the sales volume and price of Pinot noir and in overall wine consumption.
GAE91 TIL there is a prison called “Purgatory” in Utah
16LJP TIL Easy-Bake Ovens (approximately 1m) were recalled in 2007 due to 278 reports of kids getting their hands or fingers caught in the oven's opening. These included 82 burns, 16 of which were second or third-degree burns. In addition, a 5-yr-old girl's finger had to be amputated due to a severe burn.
oRaZL TIL that January 1st was chosen as the start of the New Year in 153 BCE because it was the day the new Roman consuls took office.
dDPKd TIL that Nepal has a unique time zone of UTC+5:45. It was chosen specifically to mark the time the sun passes over the famous Gaurishankar mountain, making it one of only three territories in the world with a 45-minute offset.
KYad4 TIL that During the Mexican-American War, 16 Irish Catholic soldiers defected from the U.S. Army to fight for Mexico. All of them were eventually captured and hanged from a 40-foot gallows in San Ángel, Mexico City.
a8X7y TIL the Salmon Act 1986, a United Kingdom act of Parliament which outlines legislation that covers legal and illegal matter within the salmon farming and fishing industries. Among the provisions in the act, it makes it illegal to "handle salmon in suspicious circumstances"
ZpnZQ TIL that in 1945, Germany created Sonderkommando Elbe, a Luftwaffe unit whose pilots were ordered to deliberately ram Allied bombers in mid-air. Its sole mission took place on 7 April 1945, when a force of 180 Bf 109s managed to ram 15 Allied bombers, downing 8 of them.
789pX TIL of an invention to make cigarette packs produce coughing noises when picked up. In 1972, Lewis R. Toppel patented a smoking deterrent consisting of a cigarette case attached to a miniature record player. Every time the smoker moved the case to grab a cigarette, coughing noises would be played.