› added 6 years ago

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TIL that the current CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, is the great grandson of Sakichi Toyoda, who is known as the father of the Japanese Industrial Revolution thanks to his invention of the power loom that implemented the principle of Jidoka, meaning the machine stops itself when a problem occurs.

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Z8evY TIL that H1N1, the influenza strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, survived another 40+ years as a seasonal flu bug. It was finally “extinguished” by another flu virus, H2N2, in the 1957 flu pandemic. Even so, a “new” H1N1 emerged 50 years later to cause the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic.
pKN4 TIL there is a dinosaur heavy metal band in Finland that is incredibly popular with children.
oR4LY TIL Noel Gallagher wrote the Oasis song 'Live Forever' after being offended by Kurt Cobain and the Nirvana song 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die'
Wm08 TIL in 1961, Fidel Castro closed Cuban schools for a whole year and formed teachers into a “literacy army” with the goal to eradicate illiteracy. By the end of the year, 707,212 previously illiterate people had learned how to read.
6E4yl TIL that rolling stone gave Elton John's album 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' a scathing review, despite years later including it as #91 on their list of top 500 albums of all time