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TIL for centuries, isolated communities in the Himalayas would artificially create glaciers by hauling small chunks of ice up into the mountains. These ice chunks would gradually build up during winters and slowly release water during dry spring months needed to sustain crops.

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R7GJl TIL Tomohiro Nishikado, creator of Space Invaders, made the entire game himself. Not only was he its designer, programmer, artist, and sound mixer, but he also engineered the game’s microcomputer from scratch.
8anV4 TIL that Spirit Airlines once had a person in charge of writing apology letters to disappointed customers. The "senior manager of proactive customer communications" mailed off about 20,000 apologies a year. Each one explained what went wrong on a flight and contained the manager's direct phone line.
a8BX0 TIL Hard Rock Cafe, which operates venues in 74 countries, is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida who bought it for $965M in '06. They then paid the state of FL $100M for the rights to allow Vegas-style table gambling in the Cafes.
nWPYY TIL that Ricardo Montalban saw Mr. Roarke as a fallen angel who was serving a penance for being too prideful. Helping guests rediscover their moral compass through the fantasies he granted them.
7roL7 TIL That J. R. R. Tolkien began work on The Hobbit one day early in the 1930s, when he was marking School papers. He found a blank page. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”