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TIL Costco’s Chief Operations Officer once told co-founder Jim Sinegal they needed to raise the price of their $1.50 hotdog-soda combo. Jim responded “If you raise the effing hot dog, I’ll kill you. Figure it out.” Costco ended up building its own hot dog-manufacturing plant to keep the prices low.

YpPKW TIL: Virtually every country named syphilis after its enemies. The French called it the Neapolitan disease, the English and Italians called it the French disease, Russians called it the Polish disease, Tahitians called it the British disease, and the Japanese called it the Chinese pox.
yVYGM TIL Michael Jackson joined Jimmy Carter on an immunization campaign and gave more than 10,000 children tickets to his concert as a reward for being immunized against preventable childhood diseases
m1YVP TIL Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis in 2008
QYd9 TIL Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, was given her name for two reasons. The hard consonant “X” allows her to recognize her name easier, and the name “Alexa” is also reminiscent of the Library of Alexandria; as the library was the “keeper of all knowledge”
QYBp TIL Ronnie Barrett, creator of the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, developed the now famous rifle without any background in engineering or manufacturing. In the last 100 years, Barrett is one of only 7 individuals to have invented firearms adopted by the United States Military.