› added 10 years ago

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TIL Jane Barbe was the woman who did “The number you have dialed…” recordings for the phone company. She got her start as a copywriter. Being a poor speller, she opted to read her first commercial out loud to her boss instead of submitting it in writing. He began paying her to make recordings.

LmRZ TIL that in Iceland books are exchanged on Christmas Eve & you spend the rest of the night reading. Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country; & new books are typically published only during the Christmas season. This frenzy is called Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas Book Flood.”
e0DQE TIL that modern gunpower contains it's own oxidizer for combustion, meaning you could fire a gun in space.
yLZM TIL the ATF set up a sting operation during which they hired and then arrested a mentally retarded man, allowed armed felons to leave the store, arrested four of the wrong people, paid such high prices for guns that people sold them to the agents at a profit, and eventually got burglarized.
rNANW TIL: Lord Minimus was a court Jester to Queen Henrietta Maria. At age 6, he hid in a 18" pie and busted out, entertaining the Queen so much, he was kept as a gift. Over the years, he didn't want to be a pet clown anymore. He dueled a royal who brought a squirt gun, killed him, and was then enslaved.
LZOZ TIL that Avocados are optimally adapted to be eaten and digested by an animal far larger than any alive today in the Americas. It is theorized they originally evolved their current form to allow their seeds to be spread by animals like the extinct giant ground sloth.