› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Marcus Garvey died after reading his own obituary in a newspaper. He’d suffered stroke in January 1940, and then read his own obituary in the Chicago defender; it described him as "broke, alone and unpopular". Apparently as a result, he had a second stroke and died.

d8wvQ TIL that Gerald Ford was born as Leslie King Jr. Soon after he was born, Leslie King Sr. drew a butchers knife on his wife and baby son, prompting her to move out, divorce him and remarry a paint salesman named Gerald Ford. They then decided to give the baby his name instead.
j6A5R TIL that the Doors’ second manager, Danny Sugerman, began working with the Doors when he was just 12 years old, by answering their fan mail. Following the death of Jim Morrison in 1971, Sugerman replaced the original Doors’ manager, Bill Siddons, at just age 17.
rdgo TIL Anders Celsius originally created the temperature scale with 100 degrees as freezing and 0 degrees as boiling. Carl Linnaeus, another scientist, waited until he died to change the scale to what it is today.
bLxp TIL While governor of Chukotka from 2000-2008, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich spent over US$1.3 billion of his own money on the region.
0w8pR TIL after the Pope banned joining the Freemasons in 1738, a group of Catholics started their own secret society named 'The Order of the Pug' in which initiation involved wearing a collar, walking on all fours, pawing at the door to be let in, getting barked at and kissing a pug statue's butt.