› added 7 years ago

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TIL that both the Energizer and Duracell battery brands use a pink bunny as their mascot. Duracell had it first, but they failed to renew the North American trademark, so Europeans associate the pink bunny with Duracell and North Americans see it as an Energizer brand.

wo6Y6 TIL that the first recorded separation of conjoined twins took place in the Byzantine Empire in the 900s. One of the twins was already dead, and the other lived for three days after separation. The next recorded separation is several centuries later, in 1689, by Johannes Fatio.
wLEoM TIL Rastafarians believed Haille Selassie, then king of Ethiopia to be the second coming of Jesus. Selassie refuted this and publicly denied his immorality. Rastafarians took this as proof he was in fact Jesus. Selassie's subsequent death in 1975 resulted in a crisis of faith for many Rastafarians.
Kov9 TIL Director Guillermo del Toro’s father was kidnapped for ransom in 1997. He was returned safely after his family was forced to pay double the ransom. Del Toro has been in “involuntary exile” from Mexico ever since.
kjxe TIL that during WWII A. Wald proposed the seemingly illogical idea of reinforcing the undamaged areas of US bomber and not the damaged areas. The holes represented areas where a bomber could take hits and still return home whereas the areas untouched, if hit, would cause the plane to be lost.
ky1B TIL that hot dogs are called hot dogs because they were rumored to be sausages containing dog meat, served hot. The government put an excise tax of $200 on every hot dog stand in response as a way of stifling the practice of selling them.