› added 12 years ago

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TIL a black man tried to integrate the University of Mississippi and not only was rejected, but sent to an insane asylum.

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eppKk TIL in 1972 a traveling circus set up in the village of Uquakwa, IL. Overnight, their elephant was tethered to a tree in the park. Lightning struck and killed the elephant. The panicked Circus owners packed up all of their gear, and scurried out of town, leaving the 6500 lb dead Pachyderm behind.
neE0b TIL Tom Dickson, the "Will it Blend?" guy, had his blender jar design ripped off by Vita-Mix. He took them to Federal court, won, and was eventually awarded $24M
oBoV8 TIL that Phil Zimmerman, the developer of PGP, named the symmetric-key cipher of PGP v1.0 as "BassOmatic", based on a Dan Aykroyd SNL skit involving a blender and a whole fish to illustrate that the BassOmatic algorithm does to data what the original BassOmatic did to the fish
XE8Lr TIL Ancient Romans used to wipe their butt with a communal sponge on a stick, rinsing it with vinegar or salt water before leaving it for the next person.
PAYZ TIL South Korea bans children aged under 16 from playing online games between midnight and 6AM under a so-called “Cinderella Law”