› added 3 years ago

123

TIL While researching service dogs for a novel, Dean Koontz was so taken with Canine Companions for Independence he made donations totaling $2.5 million. As a gift, CCI gave him a serivce dog, which he named Trixie. Trixie Koontz became his pen name when he writes books from a canine perspecitve.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

pYNWN TIL that if you hear "Stars and Stripes Forever" at a circus, you better run toward the exits. Circuses use the song as an way to alert employees that there's a disaster afoot, and they won't play the song at any other times.
mxwWE TIL A Roman slave master, Vedius Pollio, kept sharp-toothed moray eels in a pool, to throw slaves in to be eaten alive. Wen Emperor Augustus came, a slave accidentally broke a goblet. When Augustus tried to plead for the man's life, Pollio refused. Augustus ordered all Pollio's goblets smashed.
oDpr TIL North Korea created a military rank equivalent to a seven-star general in order to have their leaders outrank the military leaders of all other countries.
NXypQ TIL when D.B. Cooper hijacked NOA flight 305 in 1971, this was the 'Golden Age of Hijackings' with an average of 1 hijacking every 5 days. Amazingly, until Cooper successfully parachuted out of the plane at 10,000 feet into the freezing cold with $200,000, hijacking a plane was not a federal crime.
LkvnQ TIL: There's a $200 million abandoned village of 732 Disney-like castles in Turkey