› added 9 years ago

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TIL of the Persian social custom of Taarof, where every business owner is obliged to refuse payment, and every customer is obliged to insist on paying anyway, sometimes going back and forth up to 3 times

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5Vx5D TIL Óscar Taveras, whom Baseball America ranked as the third-best prospect in all of baseball in 2013, died in a car accident at the age of 22. His BAC was 0.287, nearly six times the legal limit for the Dominican Republic.
b9YbZ TIL the 'Cookie Monster' character from Sesame Street was originally created to advertise Munchos potato crisps in the 1960s, and was later adapted for Sesame Street munching on cookies instead.
mxYrx TIL that several months before Russell Crowe won the Oscar for Gladiator, the FBI warned him that the al-Qaeda were planning to kidnap him as part of a “cultural destabilization plot”. For nearly two years, the FBI guarded Crowe in public and refused to give him any details about the threat.
yVeOl TIL that during WWII a pilot named J. Hunter Reinberg wanted to make ice cream for his men in the Pacific Theater. So he flew to 33,000 ft and came back down with gallons of chocolate ice cream.
Lpv0 TIL Atilla The Hun died from drunkingly choking on his own blood. He was buried in secret, in a river. His body was placed inside of 3 coffins, one of each made of gold, silver, and iron. Those who buried him were then killed so that nobody would know where the grave was.