› added 12 years ago

87

TIL Oil companies dumped gasoline in rivers before it was popular to use as a fuel.

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x6jpD TIL: Renya Mutaguchi is one of Japan's most infamous generals. He acquired 20 days worth of food for the 4 month Battle of Imphal, leading to 55,000 of his 85,000 men to die of starvation before the battle. He suffered a 87% casualty rate and at the funerals, he handed pamphlets claiming he won.
l7XXB TIL The American government (Among others) tried to deliver mail via missiles
yQKlJ TIL that addiction is a learning disorder, a condition where a system designed to motivate us to engage in activities helpful to survival and reproduction develops abnormally and goes awry.
XpB8 TIL Some older/less efficient worker termites will develop ‘backpacks’ of toxic chemicals that explode when the termite is threatened. They are essentially used as suicide bombers when the colony is being attacked.
XE7br TIL a software developer once tested asking for donations vs. limiting trial version features. He randomly gave people either a version that asks for a donation, or one that is feature-limited. The feature-limited version made five times as much money, and the experiment cost him $17,000 in sales.