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TIL That in 1978, a group of 18 farmers from Xiaogang Village in Anhui Province, China, secretly agreed to abandon collectivism and adopt private property rights by subdividing their collective farm. The change resulted in a harvest larger than the previous five years combined.

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N7446 TIL Steinway & Sons (1853) pianos are handcrafted and take a year to build. The company's 600,000th piano was built in 2015 with an inlaid Fibonacci design in the lid. It is valued at $2.4 million.
8a1VL TIL the underground quarries of Paris, which house the city’s catacombs, were once used as a mushroom farm, as they allowed better cultivation all year round. By 1880, up to 300 mushroom farmers produced more than 1000 tons each year.
yV778 TIL that VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was also the first "killer app" (a program that makes people buy a computer just to run the software). VisiCalc was so revolutionary, and so powerful, that people bought the $2000 Apple II (the only computer it ran on) to run the $100 application.
XlMr TIL in 2009, an abusive litigant sued a man for $30k for selling him a $40 printer on Craigslist, claiming it was broken. The case lasted for 6½ years and, as of 2016, may still be on-going.
rRJ04 TIL the American Humane Association Film Unit (responsible for "No Animals Were Harmed" message in films) formed in 1940 due to outrage about a horse that was thrown off a cliff and drowned for the 1939 film Jesse James. Before then trip wires were used to film horses falling over often killing them