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TIL: Instead of donating money to a New York Food Bank, Toyota offered ‘kaizen’; a Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement”. Toyota’s engineers applied kaizen to the soup kitchen, reducing the average wait time from 90 to 18 minutes.

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GYMnQ TIL of William S. Clark who founded what would become Hokkaido University. Although forgotten in America, he had a significant impact on the scientific and economic development of Hokkaido and is widely revered in Japan. His parting words to his college were, "Boys, be ambitious!"
E1r8W TIL I learned that a lawyer once tried to bring a tic-tac-toe playing chicken into court to prove that being able to play tic-tac-toe did not prove you were mentally competent to understand the consequences of your actions or why you were being executed for them
VBBdB TIL Koi fish, while superficially signifying "good luck," most strongly mean "perseverance in the face of adversity" because they swim against the current. In legend, they swam up a waterfall and turned into a golden dragon upon reaching the top.
kOyb7 TIL about Operation Platypus: in 1943, Winston Churchill randomly demanded a live platypus from Australia. The poor platypus (named Winston, of course) was sent across the ocean to Liverpool but died just 4 days before the arrival when the ship got attacked by a U-boat attack.
57Jn TIL that within a week after the “Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima” picture was taken. Half of the men in the picture were killed in combat.