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TIL: The U.S bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2million ($122million today). Since 1959 Alaska has produced $157billion worth of oil. That’s a return of nearly 130,000%!

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bQRE TIL Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il once claimed to have invented hamburgers
W761o TIL In 1924, Chin Foin, the wealthiest restaurateur in Chicago’s Chinatown, was found dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft in his business, the Mandarin Inn. His restaurants set a new standard for Chinese restaurants and inspired the first Chinese-American Cookbook.
9YVx6 TIL that the only document with the taste of Cyanide written is the Suicide Note of an Indian Goldsmith who killed himself in 2006 by mixing a pinch of it in his liquor. He wrote “Doctors, potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It burns the tongue and tastes acrid."
b96YZ The rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian empire was responsible for the annihilation of an estimated 40 million people, but there were clearly more than a few conquests off the battlefield as well. A 2003 study suggests that 1 in 200 men are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Studies of Y-chromosome data found that almost 8 percent of men living in the former Mongolian empire carry nearly identical Y chromosomes. Researchers believe this is attributed to a unique set of social selection circumstances put into play by the spread of the Mongolian empire. In this week’s "Today I Learned," research scientist Albert Lin elaborates on Genghis Khan as a romantic.
Y7JmB TIL that everything from the ice hockey Stanley Cup, Port Stanley in the Falklands, Brisbane's Stanley county and Liverpool's Stanley Dock and Park are all named after one father and son.