› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish carpenter, suffered huge losses after a fire broke out in his woodworking shop that made furniture. He descended into bankruptcy & decided to start making small wood items, including toys. He even renamed his company to 'leg godt' ('play well') or Lego.

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6ELnJ TIL Qajartalik (Inuktitut for "where there is a kayak") is a petroglyph site located on Qikertaaluk Island, Nunavut, with over 150 carvings of faces in soapstone. It is believed to be the north most rock art site in North America
mx0Lv TIL that right after President William McKinley was shot in September 1901 a surgeon was called upon to help him. The surgeon didn't know it was for the president and said,"Don't you see, I can't leave. I am in the middle of a case even if it were for the President of the United States"
v1Xn7 TIL, Students as young as six must use a 2,500 foot rickety bamboo ladder to attend school in a Chinese Southwest Sichuan Province.
R5ojl TIL that a bear was shot at a jazz festival. At the 2004 Kaslo Jazz Etc Festival in British Columbia, a black bear got too close to the audience listening to Jeff Healy because people lured the animal with food. As Healy and 1700 horrified people watched, the RCMP killed the bear with a shotgun.
dDXjB TIL that the star Betelgeuse gets its English name due to a 13th century translation error from the Arabic ‘Yad al-Jauzā’ (Hand of Orion) because some one mistook the Arabic letter for Y (ي) for the letter for B (ب). Written as part of a word, the only difference is an extra dot on the bottom for Y.