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TIL that Parmentier, to encourage the consumption of potatoes which people were wary of, decided to have the field where he grew them guarded by armed men during the day but not at night. Guarding the field increased the value of the crop; at night it was easy to steal tubers, and consumption spread

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ADo0l TIL Bill gates purchased the Leonardo da Vinci's Codex for $30,802,500. Three years later he had its pages scanned into digital image files, some of which were later distributed as screen saver and wallpaper files on a CD-ROM as part of a Microsoft Plus! for Windows so everyone could enjoy them.
yQZWV TIL Serbian artist Uroš Predić made a painting of drunks in his village returning home from the pub at dawn. He hoped the painting would convince them to change their ways but instead they ended up loving it. Some even complimented how accurate it was.
lE0N TIL that Thomas Harris based his character Hannibal Lecter on a real person, a doctor who murdered and dismembered his victims and treated patients while in prison. He spent nearly 40 years in prison before being released in 2000. He went back to practicing medicine.
v1Kpr TIL There are 2 missing nuclear bombs that fell into the Atlantic Ocean on July 28, 1957 and are roughly 100 miles away from Atlantic City, NJ.
J46Q TIL that after Elon Musk’s wife told him “I am your wife, not your employee” due to him not treating her as an equal, he told her that “if you were my employee, I would fire you”