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TIL that in 1998, during an economic crisis in Russia, teachers in western Siberia were being paid with vodka. The decision came about after attempts to pay them with toilet paper and funeral accessories 'provoked indignation'; other workers were offered bikes, cabbages and bras as payment.

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via reddit.com

nyab TIL The colored dots found on soda cans consist of all the colors used in the can design. If a can makes it through production and a dot is gone, then laborers will be able to trace the problem to a single machine applying that color, without shutting down all of the machines to resolve the problem
1OxO TIL Back when the NYC Subway used tokens, people called “token suckers” would jam token slots with paper and suck out stuck tokens with their mouths. To prevent this, some attendants would sprinkle chili powder into the slots.
oB8xY TIL that in 1979, George Lucas created the Lucasfilm Computer Department with two branches. The Games Group became LucasArts. The Graphics Group became Pixar
nZZr TIL USPCC (Bicycle Cards) made special decks to send as gifts for American prisoners of war in German camps. When these cards were moistened, they peeled apart to reveal sections of a map indicating precise escape routes.
nnM9 TIL the plot of the pilot episode of the show “The Lone Gunmen”, a spinoff of the X-Files, featured 3 conspiracy theorists thwarting a secret government plot to fly a plane into the World Trade Center and blame it on foreign interests in order to boost defense spending, it aired march 2001.