› added 4 years ago

100

TIL Chiquita, the banana company, orchestrated and paid for a massacre known as the "Banana Massacre" in Colombia in 1928

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YLW7 TIL: James Brown used to fine his band members for things like wearing unshined shoes, missing a dance step or showing up late to a gig
BgLQx TIL: When Texas entered the Union as a slave state in 1845, a legal technicality created an ungoverned, lawless strip of land (which later became the Oklahoma panhandle). People from Kansas moved in to evade strict alcohol laws and the (unofficial) capital was called "Beer City".
gvA7 TIL the ‘Department of Defense Excess Property Program’, hands out over $500M worth of free surplus military-grade weaponry to state and local law enforcement each year, militarizing hundreds of jurisdictions a year.
Bjlk TIL James Jameson, heir to the Jameson Irish Whiskey company, once bought a 10-year-old slave girl for six handkerchiefs because he wanted to sketch the event as cannibals killed, mutilated, and finally, ate her.
EgVY0 TIL of Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 13 December 1721) who was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean.