› added 9 years ago

195

TIL President Rutherford B. Hayes owned the first Siamese kitten to reach America.

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oKJW TIL the Nazis formed a plan in 1939 to counterfeit the British pound to cause hyperinflation. Using a german concentration camp, they manufactured $132 million GBP, which is the equivalent of $6-7 billion modern-day pounds. They partially succeeded.
LQeVP TIL that even folk tales are classified as per the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) index which catalogues them into 2399 classes based on the overarching theme (animal, magical, religious and so on). For example Cinderella is ATU type 510.
KYvA6 TIL in 1952, many of Adlai Stevenson's friends and associates led a "draft Stevenson" movement to make him run for President and continued even when he told them to stop.
R7XB8 TIL about the sick building syndrome, a condition in which people in a building suffer from symptoms of illness or become infected with chronic disease from the building in which they work or reside. Misplanned aerodynamics and defective construction materials are among the causes of SBS.
R7RMl TIL Bill Murray auditioned for the role of Sulley in Monsters, Inc., but the director, Pete Docter, said that when they decided to offer it to Murray, they were unable track down the elusive actor because he had replaced his team of agents with a toll free 1-800 number. They took that to mean "no".