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TIL that Abraham Lincoln created the secret service just hours before he was assassinated.

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VMDe8 TIL the passenger pigeon once had a population of 3-5 billion birds in North America. Hunters killed tens of thousands of them every day, then ignored calls to protect them when their numbers dwindled, until the last wild one was shot and stuffed in 1902, and the last captive one died in 1912.
gWl4 TIL From 1995-2004 A caller coaxed McDonald’s managers into strip searching workers and even got the fiancé of one Assistant Manager to order a worker to perform oral sex on him. The story has now been made into a movie called “Compliance.”
8vkb TIL the package that Tom Hanks did not open in “Castaway” contained “a waterproof, solar-powered satellite phone” according to Robert Zemeckis
yQWPv TIL while Apple was buying rural land for a new building, one couple refused to sell their 1 acre plot of land they had originally purchased for $6,000. After rejecting every single offer, Apple just told them to name a price. They sold it for $1.7 million.
VB6wm TIL that Stanley Kubrick, who has four films on the AFI's Top 100 list of all time (2001, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, Spartacus), never received either an Oscar or a Golden Globe for his directorial work.