› added 8 years ago

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TIL J.R.R. Tolkien started the Hobbit while grading examination papers. He found a blank page in one of the exams. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.

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D1Vmv TIL that birds in the Netherlands fly higher on New Year's Eve to avoid the fireworks
6K1X TIL in 2015, a former Google employee purchased the Google domain for $12 because of an error. Google offered to pay him $6006.13 (that spells “Google”) to have it back. When he said he would donate it to charity, they doubled it to $12,000.
oBGEE TIL Buddy Holly asked his wife out on their first meeting and proposed to her on the second. His manager disapproved of the relationship saying it would upset his female fans, so during his tours she was presented as his secretary.
LyD0 TIL that the Soviet Union did not admit that a reactor had exploded at Chernobyl until nearly 3 days after radiation from the disaster set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden 1000 km away.
N19M TIL that Puyi, the last Emperor of China, spent his last years as a commoner in Beijing under the communist regime. On his first day of work as a street sweeper, he was lost and told passersby, “I’m Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing dynasty. I’m staying with relatives and can’t find my way home.”