› added 10 years ago

87

TIL In 2000, Blockbuster Video turned down a chance to purchase a one-year-old company called Netflix for $50 million.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

pPaG TIL the reason airplane bathrooms still have ashtrays is because of an FAA decision that some people will still smoke on an airplane even though it’s not allowed, and when they do there needs to be a safe place to put their cigarette butt.
Br7xD TIL that a baby prince from Khawarizam (Persia) was sold as a slave after the Mongols invaded their land and killed his family. He arrived in Egypt and rose among the ranks until he became king. He then lead the army and served the Mongols their biggest defeat in history.
5YAX8 TIL President Andrew Jackson's pet parrot that had to be removed from Jackson's funeral service because it would not stop swearing
4kolg TIL upon the unification of Germany in 1871, Ulysses S. Grant expressed that he thought the German union to be quite similar to the American Union and said that he thought of it as a reproduction of the "best features of the U.S. Constitution.
JBe4 TIL that humans are the best long-distance runners on the planet, able to beat horses (and everything else) in marathon distance races.