› added 8 years ago

156

TIL that in 1993 Pepsi ran a contest in the Philippines in which it promised 1 million pesos, roughly $40,000, to the person who found the number 349 inside his bottle cap. Pepsi went on to mistakenly print 800,000 winning caps, leading to outrage and death threats to Pepsi executives.

Read more articles.latimes.com

via reddit.com

Zad4 TIL the phrase “balls out” has nothing to do with testicles, but rather with early steam engine components.
4kXkN TIL that from 2008 to 2014 an IBM employee with a security cleareance leaked the usage of Danish celebrities' credit cards in real-time to tabloid journalists and received a monthly $1500 "paycheck" for his services.
EBnx TIL that the English word oil comes from the ancient Greek word elaia, which means olive. So olive oil basically means olive olive.
N0le TIL that Don Mclean’s kids sang the Weird Al Yankovic parody (‘The Saga Begins’) of his classic 'American Pie’ so much that he sometimes sings it accidentally in concert.
P1pgg TIL that when a Japanese pilot was accepted into the Kamikaze program, his wife drowned herself and their 1 and 4 year old daughters in a river so that he would have no distractions in carrying out his mission