› added 10 years ago

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TIL of Ferdinand, the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner, who was likely turned into pet food or steaks in Japan in 2002

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0d87R TIL of the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing "automaton" from the 1700s actually operated by a cleverly hidden human. It toured the palaces of Europe, even playing against Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, who attempted to cheat multiple times, prompting the Turk to swipe all the pieces off the board.
K7VR TIL Liberian militia leaders adopt crazy names such as General Butt Naked, General Mosquito, and his nemesis, General Mosquito Spray.
kgpe TIL the Hawaiian Islands were originally named the Sandwich Islands by British explorers after the Earl of Sandwich
d89Z TIL In a study of almost 500 students that examined how gifted students are viewed by their peers, gifted boys were found to be the most popular, gifted girls the least.
D1Q6V TIL that one of the main engineers behind NASA's Challenger rocket, which exploded in 1986, revealed that after NASA would not heed his warnings against launching in the cold weather, he told his wife the night before the launch, "It's going to blow up."