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TIL That the Guinness Book of World Records started because a manager of the beer company wanted to know what the fastest game bird ever recorded was and got annoyed when he couldn't find out.

Read more history.howstuffworks.com

via reddit.com

v1ag8 TIL: China creates so much synthetic diamonds that are identical to real diamonds that prices of diamonds are being driven down and De Beers has created a university to study how to identify "natural" and "man made" diamonds because no experts can tell the difference.
rR6w4 TIL Southern California Edison is only now starting to replace bare power lines with insulated power lines in high wildfire risk areas.
l7oJG TIL that in 2004, a fake 'Sri Lankan national handball team' tricked its way into a German tournament, lost all of their matches, and then mysteriously disappeared. A farewell letter thanked the Bavarians for their hospitality.
VjwB TIL Hawaii has only one native land mammal and it’s a bat. The rest are invasive.
0dbRy TIL that a Persian King named Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar ordered two servants to be executed for being too loud. But since it was a holy day, he delayed the execution by a day and made the servants return to their duties. The servants murdered the king in his sleep that night.