› added 4 years ago

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TIL Jesse Owens gave 1 of his 4 Olympic gold medals to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, he gavethe other 3 to a hotel owner in Philadelphia to pay for his outstanding bill at the hotel, and one of his medals sold for $615,000 in Dec 2019.

BryOe TIL George Washington died from cynanche trachealis, aka the croup, mainly due to over zealous Doctors. Washington feeling very sick asked his overseer, Albin Rawlins, to bleed him. Doctors bled him four more times over the next eight hours, with a total blood loss of 40% along with other remedies.
DlZr TIL that there are fake Harry Potter books written in China using material from other authors, with titles such as “Harry Potter and the Filler of Big” and “Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”
pYR9e TIL that more than 50% of kids in China want to become astronauts when they grow up, while only around 10% in the US want to.
6EvXX TIL when Gene Wilder was offered the role of Willy Wonka, he accepted on one condition: he'd enter with a limp, lose his cane and continue to limp, and then when he's found out, perform a somersault for the crowd, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth."
M7AVV TIL airports hire crews of "birdmen" that use methods like horns, sirens, lasers, and pyrotechnics to ward off large groups of birds. They even intentionally remove horizontal branches from nearby trees to discourage large migrations from settling near the runways.