› added 5 years ago

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TIL that the worst all-time storm (wind speed) is Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, 2013 (aka Yolanda). No other storm got to 315km/h (195mph) and sustained it for 1 minute. Damage included ~8,000 dead and missing people. Post-storm, some regions were on the brink of Anarchy and looting was common.

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via reddit.com

GA5m4 TIL the biggest lottery scam in US history was done by Eddie Tipton, head of the Multi-State Lottery Association's IT security. He felt underappeciated & overworked, so he wrote code that narrowed his odds from 5 million to 1 to 200 to 1. He won drawings in five states worth $24m before his arrest.
Lko5m TIL when Japanese pole vaulters Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe tied for silver at the 1936 Olympics they refused a tie-breaker. The silver was arbitrarily awarded to Nishida. They had their medals cut in half and then welded together so they each had one "friendship medal" of half silver, half bronze.
rxoo TIL: When the film “Cannibal Holocaust” was released, it’s depiction of an impalement was so accurate, that the director was charged with murder
N7WXe TIL that the reason old pubs have "Ye Old" instead of "The Old" is because when the printing press was invented in Germany, they didn't have any letters for the old letter Thorn, which made a "th" sound. Thorn ultimately was replaced with Y because they looked similar until the Th start was popular.
KOnZa TIL inventor of the Murphy-Bed, William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957), created his first hide-away bed as means to convert his one-room apartment into a parlour, specifically to host the company of his future wife. It was considered inappropriate at the time to for a woman to enter a man's bedroom.