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TIL the commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 1964, George Morrison, was the father of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the rock band The Doors.

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764x TIL that when Koichi Tanaka of Japan won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2002, he became the first to only have a bachelor’s degree. Tanaka was so unknown that he was on the second-lowest job level at the obscure Shimadzu Corp. The embarrassed scientific-instrument maker immediately promoted Tanaka.
xEgg TIL in 1976 the Mego Corporation rejected a deal to make Star Wars action figures, saying it that they would go bankrupt if they made toys of every “flash in the pan” sci-fi B movie that came along.
nWmOr TIL that the first airplane ticket ever sold was bought by a reporter named Albert Beach in 1908 for a flight from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida. The ticket cost $400, which is equivalent to around $11,000 in today's currency.
Wxv4 TIL Between 213-210BC in Ancient China, Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi buried scholars alive (and burned books) in order to unify all thoughts and political opinions and to suppress intellectual discourse.
OnN4 TIL Bill Waterson based Calvin off of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and based Hobbes off of theologian John Calvin.