› added 9 years ago

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TIL Fedex got down to the last $5k, which wasn’t enough to refuel the planes to make that weekend’s deliveries. With impending bankruptcy and no other options Frederick Smith literally took it to Vegas, got lucky, and turned it into enough money to refuel, finish the shipments, and save the company.

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9wx9D TIL of a courtier, Jeffrey Hudson, in the court of King Charles I of England who was only 18 inches tall. He challenged a normal-height man to a duel with pistols over an insult. His opponent came to the duel armed with a water squirt gun. Hudson shot him in the head with a real gun, killing him.
LZvQ TIL Native Americans took over Alcatraz Island for 19 months in the 60s/70s.
b6O4N TIL about the Angola Prison Rodeo, the longest-serving prison rodeo in the U.S. One event is “convict poker,” where a bull is released with the sole purpose of unseating poker players, and the players must resist the urge to run away in order to win.
VdO0 TIL the last emperor of china, Puyi, became emperor at 2 then, shortly after, china became a republic. Puyi like many other Chinese emperors stayed separated from the rest of China in the forbidden city. No one told Puyi he was no longer emperor until his mid teenage years.
Bv1e TIL that actor Andre Royo who played drug addict Bubbles on The Wire was given a small package of heroin by a Baltimore resident with the man saying “Man, you need a fix more than I do.”. Royo has called this his “street Oscar”.