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TIL: While Apple was buying land for a data server in NC, a couple refused multiple offers from them for their 1 acre plot of land. Apple got frustrated asked them to name their price. This led Apple to pay $1.7m for a 1 acre plot of land.

Read more iphone.appleinsider.com

via reddit.com

7rPnM TIL the phrase 'Knock on Wood' derives from the pagan belief that malevolent spirits inhabited wood, and that if you expressed a hope for the future you should touch, or knock on, wood to prevent the spirits from hearing and presumably preventing your hopes from coming true.
8al9V TIL researchers trained pigeons to discriminate between paintings by Picasso and by Monet. They won the humorous Ig Nobel Prize in psychology for their work.
R5044 TIL writer, anarchist, and environmentalist Edward Abbey was secretly buried in the Arizona desert as per his wishes. It took his friends 5 cases of beer, some whiskey, and 2 attempts to fulfill his wish.
D1b0J TIL of Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates: born in South Carolina the black son of a sharecropper in 1907, he danced on the street for coins as a child, lost his leg at 12, taught himself to tap-dance afterwards, was competing in talent shows by 15, on Broadway by 20 and performing for royalty by 30.
R5Rba TIL Cowboy boots aren’t taxed in Texas, but hiking boots are.