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TIL Robert Downey Jr. had such a bad criminal record that he was interrogated for 6 hours at customs on his way to the Iron Man premiere in Japan, before being told never to come back again

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Bgvjd TIL: Viking-era Scandinavians believed every person had a sort of luck spirit that could leave the body under extreme circumstances. The English saying that someone’s luck has run out is actually an adaptation of a Norse proverb. But when the Norse said it, they meant it literally.
KOAPE TIL that in 1955, the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo company leader Akio Morita explained that the company name would be difficult to pronounce in foreign lands. Changing it to Sony Corporation would allow them to expand worldwide.
K5jJ TIL President Andrew Jackson had to leave for a hotel when roughly 20,000 citizens celebrated his inauguration inside the White House. His aides ultimately had to lure the mob outside with washtubs filled with a potent cocktail of orange juice and whiskey.
Yjgv TIL scientists studied a parrot for 30 years and found he had the intelligence of a five-year-old human. He had a vocabulary of 150 words and could ask for a banana. If he was offered a nut instead, he would stare in silence, ask for the banana again, or take the nut and throw it at the researcher.
1aR6d TIL: Tupac Amaru Shakur's mother was a black panther activist who named her son after an Incan ruler who, in the late 1700s, lead the largest rebellion in Spanish Colonial history. The rebellion was unfortunately unsuccessful and he died as a consequence.