› added 1 year ago

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TIL the first picture of a human being taken was of a man in Paris in 1838 who had stopped to have his shoes shined and didn't move long enough to be captured in the 10 minute photo exposure time.

E1547 TIL that the nautical terms for either side of a ship, Port and Starboard, were changed to the current terms due to the confusion caused by the old term for the left side. The terms used to be Larboard and Starboard.
AD7nn TIL that Nike had conditions before giving rookie Michael Jordan a record contract: Either be rookie of the year, or average 20 ppg, or be an all star, or sell $4 mill worth shoes in a year. Jordan was rookie of the year, scored 28.2 ppg, named all star, and Nike sold $100 mill of shoes in 1984-85.
w7KP TIL Kim Jong-il, Great Leader and film-lover, had South Korea’s most famous actress and her director husband kidnapped and held hostage for eight years in order to force them to make movies he liked.
mxVbo TIL about Dehomag, a German subsidiary of IBM and was the main provider of computing equipment in Nazi Germany. It provided the German government with machines to conduct censuses and gave the Nazis a way of tracing Jews. The technology was used by the Gestapo to locate and arrest its victims.
oB9kW TIL Madam C. J. Walker was the first black businesswoman to find wild success aiming her company at creating hair care products and instruction for black women with her Anti-Kink Tonic. She was worth $8.7m in today's dollars when she died, making her the wealthiest black woman in the US at the time.