› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Ben Stein’s economics lecture in Ferris Bueller’s Day off was completely improvised. “I thought they were applauding because they had learned something about supply-side economics. But they were applauding because they thought I was boring…It was the best day of my life”

R57e9 TIL the "Dade" in Miami-Dade county refers to Major Francis Dade who led 110 men to forcibly remove the Seminoles Indians from Florida in 1836 but was the first man killed in an ambush by Chief Miccanopa. The battle was so decisive that the Seminoles only lost 3 men compared to the 108 lost by Dade.
0wZ9A TIL in EVE Online, a space themed MMORPG, that the "Bloodbath of B-R5RB" was a player vs player event that had over 7500 players participating and resulted in the loss of around $330,000 USD worth of in-game content, making it the largest PvP event in any game.
raMw TIL that Al Gore’s father once proposed, in Congress, “something cataclysmic” be done to end the Korean War. His suggestion involved creating a radiation belt on the 38th parallel using atomic bombs to turn the border of North and South Korea into a permanent toxic wasteland.
9YQp7 TIL Oxford Deans called their Head Woodsman noticing decaying oak beams built in 1460 to see if there was any oak to replace them. He said "We've been waiting for you to ask about that" - A grove of oak trees was planted with the specific purpose of replacing them hundreds of years later.
gr1v9 TIL Silicon & Synapse, Inc was founded on February 8, 1991, but changed their name to Chaos Studios, Inc. in 1993 because of confusion with breast implants. The company changed the name again in 1994 because of Chaos Technologies and they became Blizzard Entertainment because it passed a name check.