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TIL that when the cruise ship MV Aurora was christened the champagne bottle did not smash, an occurrence considered a bad omen. It has since had two Norovirus outbreaks, broke down during a 103-day world cruise costing its parent company £25m, and was caught up in the 9/11 attacks.

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l6wa TIL Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, American Airlines and two other corporations released a movie called Proud American in 2008. The movie featured a overly-patriotic storyline about the wonders of American life. It was a failure, and became IMDB’s worst movie of the 2000’s.
EdjP TIL that a 2005 study found that the scores of “wine experts” are essentially meaningless, revealing that a typical judge’s scoring of a wine varied by plus/minus four points over three blind tastings poured from the same bottle.
6EDal TIL the Rosetta Stone was not meant as a way to translate hieroglyphics, it was a government document containing three languages (Hieroglyphics, Greek and Demotic) so that all the people of Egypt at the time could read it
v1LLD TIL of the Toba supervolcanic eruption theory which caused a global volcanic winter for 6-10 years, a 1,000 year cooling of the Earth, and might have decreased human population to 3,000 -10,000 individuals.
p8dP4 TIL the Crips main founder was appalled to find his organization escalating from fist-fights of his era to gun fights, and hoped to build a truce with the Bloods before distancing himself and ultimately dying in a drive-by.