› added 4 years ago

448

TIL about The Whole Shabang, a brand of chips initially only sold at prison commissary stores. The chips were so popular amongst ex inmates that it became a grey market commodity and finally was sold to the general public.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nejQB TIL When Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street, died in 1982, the show had an episode where Mr. Hooper died. The writers extensively researched how to teach young kids about death. The episode aired on Thanksgiving 1983 so parents were home to discuss it with their kids. It never reran.
x6k01 TIL that, during the Cold War, every infantry and armor battalion in the U.S Army had one officer trained to deploy the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), commonly known as the backpack nuke
LkANr TIL about survivorship bias and its application in the military. A statistician used the survivorship bias in his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The military wanted to reinforce the areas where the bomber was shot up instead of looking where it wasn't hit.
m5WP TIL: The first item sold on ebay was a broken laser pointer, and when asked in an email by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar if he was aware that the laser pointer was broken, the buyer replied that “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”
pnbp TIL that in 1937, a natural gas leak at the local school in New London, Texas caused a massive explosion that killed upward of 295 students and teachers, the deadliest school disaster in US history. Adolf Hitler even sent his condolences by telegram.