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TIL the cars Oprah gave away during her famous "You get a car!" episode were donated by General Motors as a promotional stunt, and many of the 'winners' had to pay an additional $7,000 gift tax.

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7rjex TIL Wal-Mart lost $100m on life insurance policies it secretly bought for its employees and never intended to pay to their families
RRK4 TIL the king of Thailand used to give “White elephant gifts” to obnoxious courtiers. The recipient would be ruined by the present because they had to care for the animal.
wLYkW TIL that Edward James Jim Corbett tracked and killed 33 well-documented man-eaters, 19 tigers and 14 leopards, that combined to kill over 1,200 people. Despite the dangerous nature of the beasts he was hunting, Corbett traveled alone and by foot while hunting the cats.
eEX6 TIL Astronaut Ed Mitchell said of his experience on the moon in 1971: “From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”
ELbp TIL that the US has a worse infant mortality rate than not only the European Union as a whole but almost every country within the European Union.