› added 8 years ago

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TIL in 1958, as an experiment, Bank of America mailed 60,000 residents of Fresno, California a small plastic card with a $500 credit line. BoA figured if it failed, there’d be no media coverage because it was in Fresno. The experiment was hugely successful and the program became Visa.

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m146E TIL during WWII, the Smithsonian invented new Fish names that were easy to pronounce, so the Navy could name Submarines after them.
8elP TIL the famous “We can do it!” WWII propaganda poster only achieved popularity during the 1980’s. During the war, it was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to exhort already-hired women to work harder.
yEyV TIL A production engineer deleted the original recording of the third verse of “Stan” by Eminem. Eminem messed up on the last three lines, and the engineer accidentally re-recorded over the whole thing because he was high. When confronted by Eminem, his response was “My bad man…you wanna hit this?”
LQvMp TIL that a "gentlemen's agreement" was reached among the major motorcycle manufacturers to limit the speed of their motorcycles to 300 km/h (186 mph) for fear of import bans against high speed motorcycles in Europe.
GYNE5 TIL In 1908 William "Bigfoot" Anakin, a local champion, was taken along by a publican to court to help demonstrate that darts was not gambling, it was a game of skill. He threw three darts in the center, no other court official could do the same. The judge ruled that darts was a game of skill.