› added 5 years ago

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TIL Colonel Sanders was involved in a shootout with Matt Stewart, a local competitor, over the repainting of a sign directing traffic to his station. Stewart killed a Shell employee who was with Sanders and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders's competition.

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GVrN TIL that in the early 1900s oyster fishermen in Narragansett Bay tried to eliminate starfish that were preying on their oysters. Whenever they encountered starfish, they chopped them up with their knives and threw them back into the water. As a result, the sea star population increased explosively.
0PpN TIL that the Chinese phrase for “the general public” literally translates to the “Old 100 Families” as the 100 most common Chinese surnames account for 84.77% of China’s population. To reach this percentage in the US, you’d need to include approx. 150,000 surnames.
aKrA TIL that In 70,000 B.C. Human beings almost went extinct; dwindling to as few as 40 ‘breeding pairs’ after the eruption of the Toba supervolcano!
ADvb4 TIL Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher's mother, died a day after Carrie Fisher's death.
d87vj TIL Princess Sophie (of a minor German principality) married a Russian prince— soon after he was crowned emperor, she overthrew him and crowned herself Empress Catherine the Great. She annexed much of Poland (then ruled by her former lover), helped modernized Russia & started colonizing Alaska.