› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Madison Square Garden has not paid property taxes since 1982 because a 10 year tax abatement was inadvertently made perpetual due to a clerical error. This has cost New York City (and saved MSG) about $200M.

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mxDny TIL Las Fallas is an annual Festival in Valencia, Spain. The monuments that are built represent satiric scenes in order to criticise popular aspects of the society such as politics and the current social situation. The Fallas then are burnt at the final event called "la cremá"
wLwe1 TIL a Bellagio Bandit stole $1.5 million worth of casino chips, however, these chips turned out to be worthless, so, he joined an online forum, trying to sell the chips he had just stolen from the biggest casino in Las Vegas. He was soon caught and sentenced to prison for 3 to 11 years
XgRD TIL that 23 year old, Joe Arridy, a intellectually disabled man with an IQ of 46, was wrongfully executed in 1939. He was known for playing with his toy train that the prison warden gave him as a present while on death row. Guards and Inmates described him as “the happiest prisoner on death row”
LyaP TIL United Fruit Company’s main rival was Guatemala, who exported lots of fruit. To eliminate them, United lied to the US government that Guatemala’s government was Pro-Soviet. The US staged a coup, which led to the 36 year long Guatemalan civil war.
loep5 TIL that Latvian folklorist Anna Bērzkalne wrote her 1942 doctoral thesis in English instead of German as a form of non-violent resistance to the Nazi occupation of Latvia during World War II.