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TIL George Washington prevented a military coup over unpaid back wages by putting on a pair of glasses to read a letter from Congress, explaining he was "almost blind in the service of my country.” Moved to tears, his officers compromised.

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D16Gr TIL on 25th January 1996 Billy Bailey was executed by hanging. He is only the third person to be executed in the US by hanging since 1965. The gallows used were dismantled in 2003 as Delaware stopped allowing death row inmates this option of execution
QmyE TIL many Japanese still use clam-shell flip-phones, which “are called Galápagos phones because they evolved perfectly for an isolated environment.” The flip-phones are advanced enough & come with features locked into a Japan-only ecosystem that many customers are slow to adopt smartphones.
ne4mr TIL that Christian preacher Joel Osteen has a reported net worth of over $56 million. He lives in Texas with his family in a home valued at $10.5 million. Osteen’s televised sermons are seen by over 7 million viewers weekly and over 20 million monthly in over 100 countries.
Lkv5v TIL that in the 1980s there was a persistent rumour in the UK that McDonald's was funding the Irish Republican Army. This was ultimately traced back to a U.S. talkshow where the company was praised for its generosity in funding Individual Retirement Accounts
9m5r TIL Although the US makes up about 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for 22 percent of the world’s prison population.