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TIL as part of the plan to keep the design of Godzilla from the 1998 movie a secret, Sony sent out fake designs to marketing partners to see who was loyal. Fruit of the Loom leaked the design and lost their Godzilla license.

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wQpP TIL The fireman’s pole came about when a firefighter on the top floor slid down a pole used for binding hay during transport. It prompted his Captain to convince the Chief to install a hole and pole. They were targets of lots of jokes until people realized the company always showed up first.
yQ1pM TIL that in 2005 scientists discovered a dinosaur tail preserved in amber. It was filled with feathers.
8aLM4 TIL why "w" is pronounced double-u. The Roman alphabet did not have the letter"w" so when Latin was first used in Old English, they needed to invent a symbol for the sound made by "w" - so they made it "uu" (there was no "v" in Old English). 400 years later, Norman scribes conjoined it to become "w"
grVED TIL a computer study of over a million samples of normal English prose found that the longest word one is likely to encounter on an everyday basis is 'uncharacteristically' at 20 letters.
rRdlx TIL traditional Japanese woodworking didn't use nails or glue, instead they used interlocking joints to connect the wood