› added 4 years ago

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TIL roughly 70% of businesses in Sicily still pay protection money to the Sicilian Mafia.

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via reddit.com

rROdw TIL Nikola Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a 'working model' of his 'death beam'. He warned the management never to open it. After his death in 1943, the box was opened and they found nothing but a bunch of old electrical components
oBl9R TIL - Thailand is currently ruled by a military junta, they’ve had, on average, a coup d’état every seven years since 1932
wovd1 TIL that Venezuela's name means "Little Venice" because of the houses built on stilts above water that reminded the Europeans of the Italian city. It was coined by Amerigo Vespucci, the namesake of America.
wLlXY TIL a house in Kansas had over 2,000 brown recluse spiders removed without a single bite, leading researchers to conclude that bites were unlikely unless humans come in skin contact with the recluse.
bLa7 TIL Carl Sagan sued Apple Computer in 1995. Apple used ‘Carl Sagan’ as an internal code for the Power Macintosh 7100. After a cease-and-desist letter, Apple renamed it 'BHA’, for Butt-Head Astronomer. Sagan sued. Apple then changed the name to “LAW”, short for “Lawyers are Wimps”.