› added 11 years ago

67

TIL that Stephen King drank enough to write the book Cujo and not remember doing it.

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8DaP TIL in 1958, Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese people to kill all the sparrows in the country to protect the rice crops. The effort backfired as, without the sparrows to eat insects, the locust population exploded and wiped out food crops, contributing to the starvation of tens of millions of people.
YpvlA TIL: U.S. Medal of Honor recipients (in all branches of service) their children are automatically approved for enrollment into U.S. military academy so long as they meet basic requirements. Note: Acceptance rating for most applicants in general is less than 10%.
8epP8 TIL President Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon named Rebecca. He got it as a gift in place of a turkey for Thanksgiving and Coolidge had no interest in eating it so he kept Rebecca as a pet and had a “White House Raccoon” tag made for her.
a8gnN TIL that to raise morale in the Pacific theater in WWII, the US deployed a barge capable of storing 2000 gallons (7600 L) of ice cream and making another 10 gallons (38 L) every seven minutes.
x6JXk TIL Yiannis Kouros won the 1988 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon (537 mi, 864 km) even though he started 12 hours behind the rest of the field after the organizers of the race challenged him to do so. In total, he won 5 of the 9 times the event was held.