› added 9 years ago

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TIL that Rihanna was sued for her use of the sample “Mama-say, mama-sa, ma-ma-ko-ssa” in her song “Please Don’t Stop the Music” because she only got permission for using it via Michael Jackson from his use of the sample in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin” and not from the original artist Manu Dibango.

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GAYnE TIL in 1603, The Spanish and Japanese massacred an estimated 20,000 Chinese in the Philippines (Sangley Rebellion)
ADZZ7 TIL that when febreeze first came out it was marketed as an odor eliminator (and was very effective at it) but sold poorly due to people not realizing their homes/ clothes smelt bad. It was only until they added scents and marketed to people as a final touch to cleaning that it became successful.
awK7A TIL that Crimean Gothic, the last survivor of the East Germanic language group (Including the Gothic of the tribes who sacked Rome, and Vandalic) is attested to being spoken in Crimea as late as the 19th century, a full 900 years after the rest of the language subfamily died out
yQvnV TIL: A military psychology tactic in late WW2 was to attach whistles onto bombs. As the bombs fell, they made the terrifying decrescendo whistling sound we think of today. The same sound is often dubbed over every type of bomb in movies and cartoons, despite only being used on a few specific bombs.
pQmA TIL that the superstition that the position of stars during your birth affects your life was refuted by the mathematician Pythagorus, by simply pointing out that twins don’t have the same future.