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TIL that the Netherlands' first mobile phone network was super unsafe. Spies could listen in on phone calls. Hackers discovered that they could steal any phone number or get new phone numbers by modifying the phone itself, and there was a black market for stolen car phones.

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via reddit.com

WMEN TIL the precursor to Monopoly was designed to illustrate how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants, and that when children play the game, it would “provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness.”
YpD5G TIL the movie "Paranormal Activity" had a budget of only $15,000 but made $194 million. During the screening, people were walking out that one studio executive thought the film was bombing. They later learned that the viewers were actually leaving because they were too frightened.
paPZ TIL there’s a website that catalogs people with different accents reading the same story in English… and you can access them for free!
gN69 TIL $100,000,000 lawsuit claiming the film Sister Act was plagiarized from a book A Nun in the Closet. Disney offered $1,000,000 to settle of out court the but the plaintiffs declined. Eventually the judge found in favor of Disney and the other defendants, the plaintiffs got nothing.
OoRwL TIL that for 33 years scientists have been studying a common ancestor populations of E. coli in lab constant conditions which now surpasses 60,000 generations. In 2003 the bacteria began to consume a previously ignored carbon source that had been present in their environment from the start.