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TIL BMW ran an April Fools ad saying they were giving away a free car. Only one woman showed up in her 15-year old station wagon.. so they gave her a free car. On top of that, her old car was sold off and the proceeds were donated to children with disabilities

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BgWDK TIL that the song "Istanbul (not Constantinople)", famously sung by The Four Lads in 1953 and They Might Be Giants in 1990, was written to mark the 500th anniversary of the city's titular name change.
BkwD TIL that in 1968, the first instance on US television of physical contact between a black man (Harry Bellafonte) and a white woman (Petula Clark, who took hold of his arm when signing) made it to the screen only because Clark and her husband, destroyed all the takes where the contact did not occur.
rN0 TIL: In 1976 there was a wine tasting in Paris that blindly compared Californian wines to French wines. California won and the lone reporter covering the event was blacklisted for reporting it.
wLE6P TIL that the producers of Jim Carrey's The Grinch (2000) hired a CIA operative who instructed agents on how to endure extreme torture techniques to coach Carrey on how to remain calm while they applied his makeup (which took 8 hours the first time).
8O7V TIL the great wall of china has caused the populations of plants on each side to diverge genetically.