› added 6 years ago

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TIL of the "World's Littlest Skyscraper", a building built in 1919 by a man who accepted $200,000 (in the 1910s) for it's construction, neglecting to point out to investors that the listed height of 480 was in inches, not feet.

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neoGo TIL the popular Japanese dish ramen is actually Chinese and was introduced to Japan only 100 years ago; it was originally known as “shina soba”: shina for China, soba for the noodle dish already well established in Japanese cuisine.
v1Gmj TIL in 2006, a woman farted on an American Airlines plane and attempted to cover up her farts by burning matches. When the passengers reported the smell of burning matches to the crew, the flight made an emergency landing in Nashville, and the FBI was called in to conduct an investigation.
QD6p TIL that the Gatling gun was invented by a doctor who noticed that the majority of soldiers died in the civil war due to diseases not gun shot wounds
0dgyL TIL once commonly known as “the redwood of the east,” American Chestnut trees are almost entirely extinct in the wild as of the 1940s with the exception of small, scattered populations
Lky9Z TIL that Michael Keaton's real name is Michael Douglas and to satisfy SAG rules he had to change it due to some obscure guy with the same name.