› added 5 years ago

95

TIL Princess Sophie (of a minor German principality) married a Russian prince— soon after he was crowned emperor, she overthrew him and crowned herself Empress Catherine the Great. She annexed much of Poland (then ruled by her former lover), helped modernized Russia & started colonizing Alaska.

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b6jMp TIL that the Saturn brand of cars ceased manufacturing in 2010. GM attempted to sell the brand to Penske, but the deal failed when Penske wouldn’t use Saturn’s factories and no automotive manufacturers would agree to build Saturn brand cars.
5DWn TIL that Pia Farrenkopf died in 2009… But her body wasn’t discovered until 2014, largely because she had auto-pay set up for her bills. Her mummified body was found in the garage of her newly foreclosed home only after her bank account finally ran dry.
neE9 TIL The reason the Allies knew about atrocities at Auschwitz was Polish captain Witold Pilecki, who let himself be captured, prepared inmates to uprise, distributed extra food, and built a secret radio transmitter. Pilecki was unknown until 1989, but was given Poland’s highest decoration in 2006.
VMGaQ TIL Approximately 75% of US adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% wear eyeglasses, 11% wear contact lenses and 30% of the American population is near-sighted
WGW4 TIL in the 1980s, Dominos Pizza had a campaign centered around “The Noid”. It was discontinued in 1989 after a mentally ill man named Kenneth Noid took Dominos Pizza workers hostage after he thought the ads were a personal attack on him.