› added 8 years ago

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TIL there’s an amusement park in Germany where you can ride Falcor from “The NeverEnding Story”.

e0K15 TIL That ACME in the Looney Tunes Cartoons was supposed to be ironic. Acme comes from a Greek word meaning "pinnacle" or "peak" implying "the peak of greatness" and that the product would be the best you could get. Any product with the name in the show was guaranteed to fail spectacularly.
KO8ZJ TIL Ticketmaster deliberately holds back tickets for concerts to create the illusion of scarcity, particularly when demand is highest. They also release tickets in small batches periodically, making it impossible for consumers to make informed choices about ticket purchases.
vPXZB TIL San Marino has two heads of state at once (a diarchy). The heads of state, called "Captains Regent" serve 6-month long terms. They currently have the youngest head of state in the world at 27 and have had a more female heads of state than any other nation with 18.
4k91N TIL that In Strasbourg, Alsace (now part of France), there was a strange phenomenon in 1518 where people started dancing uncontrollably for days without rest. It may have been due to stress-induced hysteria or poisoning. This phenomenon is now referred to as The Dancing Plague of 1518.
XEKJ8 TIL that many languages from northwestern Europe all the way to southern Asia and India, including English, Greek, and Sanskrit, are all descended from a common language called Proto-Indo-European, which is believed to have been spoken in what is today southwestern Russia between 7500 and 4500 BC.