› added 12 years ago

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TIL Joe Strummer (frontman of The Clash) was pressured by his manager to go into hiding in France as a publicity stunt because their Scottish leg of the tour was selling slowly. Joe Strummer obliged but instead he “dicked around” in France and ran the Paris Marathon in April 1982.

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R78Y7 TIL that tipping in America started so restaurant owners wouldn't have to pay black workers.
NX4KN TIL that some species of termites have symbiotic relationships with fungi, cultivating them in their nests as a food source in a mutually beneficial relationship.
JYODB TIL the plants we know as "peppers" (chili, bell, etc.) are only called that because Christopher Columbus thought they tasted like black pepper when he first tried them in the Caribbean.
X8MP TIL there was a pod of killer whales in Eden, Australia between 1840 and 1930 that would assist whalers in hunting baleen whales. The killer whales would find target whales, shepherd them into Twofold Bay, and alert whalers to their presence, often helping them to kill the whales.
Z8XMQ TIL during the Salem Witch Trials, when Sarah Good was asked to confess at her execution, she told minister Nicholas Noyes "You are a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink”. 25 years later, Noyes died of a haemorrhage.