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TIL that Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shogun of Japan, only ruled formally for two years before abdicating the position to his son, likely to avoid succession conflicts after his death.

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b6kj TIL that a man who gave away his fortune to charity also donated a kidney to a stranger, noting that the chances of dying as a result of the procedure were about 1 in 4,000 and “to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger”
ga6X TIL that the test pilot for the first US jet aircraft would wear a gorilla suit while flying the secret prototype, so that other pilots who reported seeing a gorilla flying a propellerless plane wouldn’t be believed
a8B5L TIL that Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, typed 313 books word for word to distribute them online free of cost. Today, the project has over 70.000 free eBooks.
APJd TIL In December 2009, a campaign launched on Facebook made Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” the number-one single in the UK for Christmas, which had been dominated for four consecutive years from 2005 by winners from the popular TV show The X Factor.
d80wd Today I learned that Swingline didn't make red staplers until Mike Judge made them famous in the movie Office Space