› added 9 years ago

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TIL in 1953, following athlete Jim Thorpe’s death, his widow was upset that his native Oklahoma would not memorialize him. Hearing of two random towns in Pennsylvania that were desperate for money, she convinced them to merge and name the new town Jim Thorpe, PA, which it’s still called to this day.

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Gw07 TIL NFL defensive tackle Amobi Okoye is the youngest player ever to play in the NFL. After testing into 9th grade at 12 and graduating at 16, he chose to play NCAA football at Louisville (though he was accepted to Harvard) before graduating early and being drafted by the Texans at the age of 19.
4knpb TIL that while filming The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger went into a LA restaurant in battle-damaged Terminator makeup. He asked for a table in character and since no one knew who the Terminator was yet, the host and everyone in the restaurant started freaking out, screaming, and quickly left
KOxla TIL Ninepin bowling (with the pins arranged in a diamond pattern) was outlawed in Connecticut and New York during the early 1800s because it was associated with heavy gambling. This led to the addition of a tenth pin (arranged in the now-common triangular pattern) to circumvent the law.
VGKD TIL that US President James Buchanan never married. As a result his niece served as First Lady during his presidency.
8GNP TIL Data for the 1890 US Census was entered on punchcards & was processed by an electromechanical tabulating machine designed/built by the company known today as IBM; it took six weeks to release the results as opposed to the 1880 census, which took seven years.