› added 4 years ago

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TIL that in other countries New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, etc. have their own exotic “American” food isles in grocery stores alot like how America has Mexican and Asian isles in their grocery stores (I lived in America for all of my life obviously)

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nWk7d TIL that before telephones, fire alarm boxes were located at street corners. To prevent false alarms or pranks, some boxes were designed with handcuffs to attach the alarm-puller to the box, and only the firemen had a key to release them
9aM6 TIL that Lord of the Rings actor Ian McKellen turned down an offer of 1.5 million dollar to officiate a wedding dressed as Gandalf, saying “I am sorry, Gandalf doesn’t do weddings.”
XEpQr TIL that the popular MMO EVE Online hired an economist to oversee the in-game money. Besides writing internal reports, he occasionally intervenes to prevent inflation and unintended market consequences. EVE has about 500k users who partake in the game's hyper-libertarian online economy.
6EeZ7 TIL that J.R.R. Tolkien. once received a goblet from a fan inscribed with "One Ring to Rule Them All..." inscribed on the rim in black speech. Tolkien never drank out of it, since it was written in an accursed language, and instead used it as an ashtray.
Zoko TIL the CEO of a credit card company took a pay cut in order to raise the wages of his staff to $70,000 per year, even for the lowest-paid clerk; the average salary of the 120 person staff had been $48K per year.