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TIL the first RollerCoaster Tycoon was written entirely in assembly code - the raw language used by your processor - by one developer. He recieved $30 million for his efforts.

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GMej TIL that British banking giant HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), but there were no criminal charges and no one went to prison.
5VXoR TIL Mountain Dew was invented by Barney and Ally Hartman to be used as a whiskey mix as they couldn't purchase their favorite lemon-lime mixer in Knoxville, TN.
1aMLd TIL The magician Harry Houdini had a younger brother named Theodore Hardeen. Hardeen was also a magician and billed himself as the "brother of Houdini." Hardeen was the first magician to conceive escaping from a straitjacket in full view of the audience.
7G6M TIL The Institute for Historical Review, a group that denies the holocaust, offered $50,000 for verifiable “proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz” the reward was claimed in 1985 by an Auschwitz survivor.
Bg4Ab TIL the practice of making New Year's resolutions is believed to have originated some 4,000 years ago where the ancient Babylonians would make promises to their gods to start the new year with a clean slate by paying debts and returning borrowed items, hoping to gain favor in the coming year