› added 11 years ago

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TIL the film ‘Back to the Future’ provides the OED’s earliest recorded example of a colloquial sense of ‘hello’, used to imply (sometimes disbelievingly or sarcastically) that the person addressed is not paying attention, has not understood something, or has said something nonsensical or foolish.

ng0b TIL: there have been only 2 human deaths attributed to wolves in North America in the 21st century
rR8M TIL that luminaries including Noah Webster, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, and Theodore Roosevelt advocated for simplified spelling, and many of them also supported simplified spellings of words such as though (tho), through (thru), and night (nite).
KOpXG TIL a portrait by Gustav Klimt commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, was stolen by the Nazis in 1941. In the 90s, his niece launched a successful legal campaign to have the painting returned to the family. She then sold it for $135 million, at the time a record for a painting.
Bggwe TIL that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald likely sunk due to the freak of nature event called "the three sisters" where three abnormally huge waves suddenly appear and completely wash away the boats. The same type of freak events occur in finance, quantum mechanics and liquid helium.
BgpLe TIL up until 1995, there were no Burger Kings in the Canadian province of Alberta north of the 52nd parallel. This was due to a restaurant in Edmonton already having the name Burger King.