› added 5 years ago

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TIL that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government was worried Japan would invade Hawaii and seize all the U.S. currency there. As a precaution, the U.S. burned $200 million in cash circulating on the islands, and replaced them with freshly printed bills with “Hawaii” stamped on them.

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nW4o7 TIL serial killer John Wayne Gacy lived and worked at a mortuary in Las Vegas years before committing murder. While employed at the mortuary, Gacy would talk to the corpses, take off their clothes, and on one occasion he slept in a coffin with a dead teenage boy.
Oa47 TIL slaves in America in 1850 cost the equivalent of ~$40,000. The going rate today is $90.
EZ00 TIL the “fat Buddha” statue is not actually a representation of Gautama Buddha, but is in fact a Chinese deity known as Budai.
W6DN TIL that in 2000, People Magazine voted Neil DeGrasse Tyson “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive.”
8eXOV TIL that in the late 1990s a revolutionary guerrilla group in Myanmar called God’s Army was founded and led by two chain smoking 9 year-old twin brothers.