› added 4 years ago

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TIL the movie Shrek is based on the 1990 children’s books Shrek! by William Steig. Steig also provided the illustrations for the book.

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8ag7Z TIL 26-yr-old Henry David Thoreau accidentally set fire to over 300 acres of forest where he was to build his famous Walden Pond shack when he & his buddy failed to beat back flames from the fire they set to cook fish they'd caught. Townsfolk called Thoreau a “damned rascal” & “a flibbertigibbet.”
WkMZo TIL during the bombing of Koriyama, Japan in April 1945, a white phosphorus bomb prematurely ignited in a B-29 plane. Crewman Henry Erwin picked up the bomb and threw it out the window, saving the plane and crew while suffering severe burns as a result. He was given a Medal of Honor for this action.
LkR1d TIL that the 2 countries that are ranked least democratic on the democracy index are named The Democratic Republic of the Congo and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea
ODv6 TIL Teddy Roosevelt had a pet one-legged rooster
Yaax TIL that two amazon booksellers using automatic algorithms to set their prices once each accidentally based their pricing on the other. The automatic programs created an upward spiral of competing prices that eventually topped $3 million for a textbook.