› added 3 years ago

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TIL that in 546 BCE Argos and Sparta had an all-star "Battle of the 300 Champions," where both sides picked their best hoplites and agreed to fight to the death. The two surviving Argives thought they'd won and left, leaving behind a single injured Spartan on the field. He also claimed victory.

yQegX TIL Sacha Baron Cohen left the Freddie Mercury biopic over creative differences with Queen; he was told Mercury died in the middle of the film. Impressed, he thought they meant a non-linear story structure like Pulp Fiction but realized the second half would be how the band “carried on.”
N1Oe TIL that when a Soviet research ship went to check on sunken Soviet submarine K-219 in 1988, it found several of the submarine’s missile silo hatches had been forced open, and the missiles, along with their nuclear warheads, were gone.
V0Z8 TIL that upon his second defeat to Alexander the Great, King Darius III of Persia offered Alexander 30,000 talents (780 tons of silver, worth around £500,000,000 today) as part of an unconditional surrender. Alexander refused and proceeded to conquer Persia and rule all the way up to the Himalayas.
xQ4B TIL The worlds oldest bottle of unopened wine dates from 325 AD and was discovered in a Roman tomb. It’s preservation is attributed to the large amount of liquid olive oil added to the bottle.
eppdn TIL virtually every delivery app driver in North America is uninsured and could lose everything if they get in an accident while working