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TIL William Wrigley originally started a ‘home essentials’ business, selling baking powder and soap. With these, he gave a free pack of his gum. He later abandoned the baking powder business when he learned that people were buying it just to get the gum.

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168ld TIL In 1907, a performer named "Sober Sue" appeared onstage. Theater offered $100 to anyone who could make Sober Sue laugh. People from the audience, professional comedians, all tried, but failed. Later it was found it was impossible for her to laugh because her facial muscles were paralyzed.
W7E8L TIL in WW2, Japan interned 130,000 British, Dutch, and American civilians. 14,000 of them perished as a result
5YK9P TIL a pony in Cornwall, England named "Fat Boy" broke out of his stable into a nearby garden with another pony, got drunk from munching on fallen fermenting apples, and fell into a swimming pool. Fire crews spent 2 hrs building a set of hay steps in the pool & hoisted Fat Boy out with harnesses.
yVl1X TIL during the two decades that the famous advertising campaign 'Got Milk?' ran, it reached an estimated 80% of all US consumers on any given day. By the end of the campaign, around 350 national TV and print ads had been used including 70 commercials in California alone.
yVkZM TIL the ‘70s fascination with truckers as anti-government modern cowboys started when an advertising executive invented C.W. McCall, a folksy trucker character, for a bread ad. He recorded country music using McCall as a stage name, and his #1 hit, “Convoy,” spawned a movie by the same name.