› added 11 months ago

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TIL A&E star Billy the Exterminator joined the Air Force at age 19 intent on a career in law enforcement; however, his military entrance examination indicated that he had an aptitude for biology, which lead to his extermination career at an Air Base.

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n0Ob TIL that in WW2 an American popular culture trend resulted in people graffiti-ing “Killroy was here” across Europe, which convinced Hitler that Kilroy was a spy and Stalin even investigated trying to find out who Kilroy was.
VM8mZ TIL that evolution probably explains why so many of us are sexually attracted to butts
ZmmB TIL that the ampersand (&) was once the last letter of the alphabet. In latin the & was called “per se”. When reciting the alphabet people would say, “X, Y, Z and per se”. That last bit (“and per se”) eventually ran together to create the word, “ampersand”
Q94k TIL the character Zapp Brannigan on Futurama was written specifically for Phil Hartman to play. After Hartman died, Billy West took the role but played the character’s voice and mannerisms as a tribute to how Hartman might have played it
GY7mE TIL of Cannibal Island - a small island in Siberia where the Soviet Union forcibly deported 6,000 citizens. They were abandoned with few supplies and only flour for food. Disease and cannibalism quickly ran rampant and after 13 weeks, 2/3 of the original deportees were dead.