› added 9 years ago

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TIL: Terry Fox, a 21 year old one-legged cancer patient, ran 3,339miles across Canada in 143 days before dying. He ran the equivalent of a full marathon every day and was the youngest person ever named a Companion of the Order of Canada.

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ygQp TIL that the first US Army emergency chocolate ration was designed to taste “only a bit better than ‘a boiled potato’” to keep soldiers from eating their emergency rations in non-emergency situations
6y4Q TIL when the words and the numbers on a check don’t match, the words prevail. This is because the Uniform Commercial Code dictates: “If an instrument contains contradictory terms, typewritten terms prevail over printed terms, handwritten terms prevail over both, and words prevail over numbers.”
nebwd TIL In 1903, H. Nelson Jackson, Sewall Crocker, and their dog Bud made the first successful transcontinental automobile trip. The journey was arduous and slow, but their trip made headlines wherever they went, proving that long-distance road travel was a real—if expensive and difficult—possibility.
101d TIL that cats do not so much view their human owners as parents or caretakers, but as inexplicably large, non-hostile cats that just happen to be their roommates.
x6APB TIL: North Korea had a covert cargo ship named the Chong Chon Gang, which was a front to conduct illicit activities around the world such as smuggling. It was chased by pirates in 2009, detained by Ukraine and Egypt in 2010, and seized by Panama in 2013. The NK gov paid $700k to release it.