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TIL that chess grandmaster Nigel Short played a series of 8 online chess games against an anonymous user and lost every single game. He believes the anonymous player was the legendary Bobby Fischer, who was living in exile in Iceland and hadn't played professionally in years.

Read more telegraph.co.uk

via reddit.com

4ABo TIL when AOL 4.0 launched in 1998 they used the entire world’s CD production market for several weeks. No other major market CDs were created during this period of time.
nRYG TIL that in 2009, Robert Downey Jr. was detained at a Japanese airport and held for 6 hours after authorities ran his passport and saw he’d failed to mention his previous convictions. He was eventually allowed to attend the ‘Iron Man’ premiere on the terms that he “never returned to Japan again.”
Ja64 TIL that Mars Candy corp, makers of Snickers, Three Muskateers, Milky Way, Twix ect., cut the size of their candy bars by 11% this year. They referred to it not as cutting size but “cutting calories”
JYK8 TIL that “Mongolian BBQ” was unknown in Mongolia until a US-based restaurant chain opened a franchise there in 2005 bringing the concept that was actually invented in Taiwan in the 70s and inspired by Japanese Teppanyaki cuisine finally to the country it lent its name from
Brlbd TIL of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was an anti-ballistic missile program, launched by Ronald Reagan in the 80's, that was intended to use lasers and satellites to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. Because of this, the program was commonly referred to as "Star Wars".