› added 9 months ago

96

TIL a town in India is addicted to chess after one man taught everyone how to play 50 years ago to eliminate excessive alcohol consumption and gambling, which has now all decreased to nearly nothing.

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via reddit.com

V9JQ TIL: The U.S bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2million ($122million today). Since 1959 Alaska has produced $157billion worth of oil. That’s a return of nearly 130,000%!
xrV5 TIL serial killer Robert Hansen abducted his victims and flew them to his isolated cabin in the Alaskan mountains. He then released them and hunted them with a knife and a Ruger Mini-14.
v1M5D TIL the Rolling Stones’ first No. 1 single, '(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction', was written, in part, by Keith Richards during a dream. Apparently, while asleep, he started rolling a tape and playing guitar, and the next morning he listened back and was satisfied with about 30 seconds of the riff.
4nnN TIL: In the original game Space Invaders, the game increasing speed as you killed aliens was due to the processor being able to render graphics faster as less aliens were on screen. This was an unintended “feature” they decided to keep as a gameplay mechanic.
R5B09 TIL that Cunard intended to name its largest ship after the late Queen Victoria. It asked the current King for permission to name it after "Britain's greatest queen", but the King, thinking they were referring to his wife, Queen Mary, agreed. Cunard was forced to change the name to the Queen Mary.