› added 3 years ago

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TIL N.Rothschild had early info that Napoleon lost at Waterloo, and used that info at the London stock exchange: instead of buying, he sold shares en masse, making people think that Napoleon had won and plummeting the stocks. At the last minute he started buying at low prices, thus making a fortune

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awKrN TIL that in 1997, a 50-pound pumpkin was speared atop a tower at Cornell University, 173 feet in the air. It stayed in place for months. Alumni are still trying to figure out who did it without being noticed -- and how.
D1ZrJ TIL that Zero Freitas has the largest collection of vinyl records in the world, over six million. Stored in boxes in a 25,000-square-foot former factory in São Paulo, at an average of 40 minutes per record, listening 10 hours per day, it would take over 1,095 years to hear each track.
5VVnr TIL that in Australia's worst aircraft crash no Australians died. In 1943 the crash of a USAAF B17 Flying Fortress took the lives of 40 US servicemen leaving only one survivor. No other aviation incident in Australia before or since has cost more lives.
ePZD TIL that after filling up a sheet of paper with text, people used to continue writing over the text at a right angle to save paper
dZaj TIL a teenager was once arrested by a policeman who scolded her for swearing on 911, even though the call made in the first place was for the teen’s dying father.