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TIL Iceland has no McDonald's restaurants anywhere in the country. McDonald's left Iceland on 30 October 2009, as a result of the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis and high import tariff on imported ingredients which required the prices of their products to increase.

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p8NvA TIL about HERA, a telescope searching for the oldest stars in the universe, from a period known as the Cosmic Dark Ages. And it is built from stuff you could buy at any local hardware store. "This is the beauty of low frequency radio astronomy: one doesn’t need custom, expensive hardware."
5YPaB TIL Carl Sagan's team wanted to include the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun" on the Voyager Golden Records (discs containing greetings in 60 languages, music and sounds from Earth aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977), but the record company EMI, which held the copyrights, declined.
yQgRp TIL that Malta had a referendum on whether or not to become a part of the United Kingdom. The British government rejected the deal however because they thought other colonies might seek a similar deal.
4X8LN TIL It’s thought that Michael Jackson may have borrowed Smooth Criminal’s chorus “Annie, are you OK?” from a CPR class he took. The CPR training dummy is named Annie and trainees are taught to say “Annie, are you OK?” to check if the patient is responsive.
Vk5k TIL that a Thai woman accidentally slipped on “farmyard mud,” grabbed a naked live wire and got electrocuted to death. After the funeral, her sister was showing her neighbors how the accident happened when she herself slipped, grabbed the same live wire and also got electrocuted to death.