› added 4 years ago

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TIL a "Karen" is actually a group of people of eastern and southern Burma (Myanmar).

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4Xvgg TIL James Cameron made the movie Titanic to get a dive to the shipwreck funded by the movie studio; not because he particularly wanted to make the movie.
4kD4R TIL Hugo Junkers, the founder of Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works that manufactured many of Germany's WWII bombers, opposed German re-armament. The Nazis seized his patents and company, threatened him with treason, and placed him under house arrest.
OoGJ6 TIL that the New Zealand badminton team at one time tried to combine their "All-Blacks" nickname, with a badminton shuttlecock, resulting in their team being nicknamed "The Black Cocks" for a while.
ZpJnR TIL that throughout the 1600s, ports on the English Channel and south west of England were at the mercy of North African pirates. Men, women and children were kidnapped to be sold as slaves.
vnEr TIL that the Shell Corporation started out in 1833 as an import-export business specialising in oriental seashells. They started shipping oil over 50 years later but the name stuck.