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TIL following the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, 1,389 people were killed in a stampede because people were afraid there would not be enough beer for the entire celebration

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mx4O TIL that there is a satellite called LAGEOS that will return to earth in 8.4 million years. Inscribed on it is a picture of what scientists think the continents will look like at that time.
WkJ98 TIL the Peruvian Navy still actively operates a ship that was built in England in 1862, disassembled into small pieces and shipped across the Atlantic, and carried by mules over 220 miles to Lake Titicaca to be reassembled. Its sister ship (sent the same way) also still works on the lake.
a89eL TIL of the "Skin Hunters", a group of Polish ER workers that murdered elderly people, then sold information about the deceased patients to competing funeral homes, so they could contact the relatives before other funeral homes could.
rRpow TIL in 1999, defunct online retailer eToys once went in a legal battle with Swiss art group Etoy, who were attempting to take their web domain because of the similarity. This then led to the group turning it into an elegant campaign called "Toywar", which ridiculed eToys and was successful.
R5bE7 TIL when the directors of Harold and Kumar (2004) took their movie to film producers, the producers said "we really love this movie", but wanted to change the main characters from Korean and Indian to "a White guy and a Black dude"