› added 8 years ago

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TIL Marvel sued City of Heros (a superhero based online game) because their users were making heroes based on Marvel characters. It later turned out that Marvel’s own investigators had made many of the characters cited in the lawsuit.

d0xK TIL Frank Hayes was a jockey who, in 1923, suffered a fatal heart attack in the midst of a race at Belmont Park in New York. His horse finished and won the race with his lifeless body still atop, making him the first, and thus far, only, jockey to win a race after death
m1lXY TIL about George Maledon, the "Prince of Hangmen." A hangman for the Federal court in Arkansas, he worked for "Hanging" Judge Parker. In 22 years he hanged over 60 men and shot 2 escapees. Asked if he regretted his job, he said "No, I have never hanged a man who came back to have the job done over."
xwZk TIL that nobody other than its owners really know who owns IKEA. Parts of it are owned by multiple shell corporations, and many of the stores themselves are technically owned by a non-profit charitable organization and thus do not pay taxes on their income.
x6kWw TIL that a form of congenital groin cysts is linked to a "tenfold increase" in schizophrenia prevalence. Link is SFW - searching for "hidradenitis" is not.
yQo5w TIL of Philoxenus, a Court Poet for the Tyrant of Syracuse, who was jailed & sent to the quarries for voicing a bad opinion about his poetry, but later pardoned, & brought back for another reading. When the tyrant asked how he liked it, he turned to the guards & said "take me back to the quarries."