› added 7 years ago

92

TIL Napoleon's grandnephew was a US lieutenant.

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via reddit.com

rnGW TIL that in Texas in 2009, a Craigslist escort took $150 from a man, refused to have sex, then got in a car and left. The man sprayed her car with his AK-47, killing her. He was acquitted because state law permits the “use of deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft.”
VBwNp TIL narrative principle Chekhov's gun states that every element in a story must be necessary e.g., if you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following act it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there. Thus, I finally found the right word to express my frustration with Game of Thrones
WkgjL TIL of Nick Leeson, a broker who single-handedly bankrupted the UK's oldest merchant bank after losing almost £850 million on the stock market.
xVdQb TIL of the ‘Window Tax’, where people were taxed based on the number of windows they had on their houses. This was used in the 18th century as a simple method to calculate tax obligations. However, many people bricked up their windows, leading to health problems.
ZPVa TIL that through 50 years of experimentation investigating the domestication of wolves, scientists in the USSR (and later Russia) successfully domesticated the Silver Fox, a breed of foxes that behave like dogs