› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Martin Luther King Jr’s grandmother died of a fatal heart attack that she suffered while MLK was supposed to be looking after her, but was instead watching a local parade. Feeling guilt that it was his fault, he attempted suicide by jumping out a second story window.

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W7ZQd TIL Taco Bell has tried to enter the Mexican market two times - in 1992 and 2007. Failed both times. It was too expensive, people didn't understand what they were ordering because the names of the food didn't make sense to Mexicans and Taco Bell used frozen meat imported from the US.
EgZ7d TIL Jimmy Webb wrote the classic song 'Highwayman' after a hard night of drinking with Harry Nilsson he passed out and had a hyper realistic dream about riding horse back with pistols and being chased and shot at by the police. He woke up drenched in sweat and immediately wrote the song
OGQ6g TIL Habituating Mountain Gorillas to get used to humans is a complex process. Initially aggressive, they start to recognize familiar humans. To get gorillas to become comfortable around white tourists, African rangers wear paper masks so they eventually won't run away from white people
VVXm TIL that in the first-released Star Wars film, “A New Hope,” out of the 121 minutes of running time, Darth Vader was on screen for all of 12 minutes, or less than 10% of the film.
lowYB TIL After crashing, a driver in German was fined for using Tesla touchscreen wiper controls, under the same rules as using a phone while driving. The German court decided touchscreen car controls should be treated as a distracting electronic device