› added 13 years ago

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TIL In 1899, President McKinley was assured by the director of the US Patent Office that everything that can be invented has already been invented.

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via reddit.com

VMEKZ TIL that Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, predicted in 1995 that the Internet would suffer a "catastrophic collapse" the next year, promising to eat his words if it did not. In 1997, he blended a printed copy of his prediction with some liquid and drank it.
R7aD9 TIL that in early 2016, a woman tracked down the family of a WWII veteran whose Purple Heart she bought at an Arizona Goodwill store for $4.99
e0bl6 TIL the Microsoft Flight Simulator series predates Microsoft Windows by 3 years, making it one of the longest running PC games series of all time.
Z8poY TIL A town in West Virginia named Mole Hill, WV changed it's name to Mountain, WV so they could literally make a mountain out of a mole hill.
lN91 TIL that, in the early 1960s, the CIA coined the term ‘Plausible Deniability’ to describe the withholding of information from senior officials in order to protect them from repercussions in the event that illegal or unpopular activities by the CIA became public knowledge.