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188

TIL at the 1900 Paris Olympics, the winners received valuable works of art instead of gold medals

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86y4 TIL Kim Jong Il once tried to solve North Korea’s food shortages by breeding giant rabbits. A German farmer sent them 12 giant rabbits to get started, but later learned all 12 were eaten at Kim Jong Il’s birthday party.
8eGn8 TIL In Jerusalem, there is an 'immovable ladder' under the window of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There since 1757, it cannot be moved without the agreement of all 6 church clerics. Once a chair was moved 20cm which resulted in a fistfight, so now nobody dares to alter the ladder.
R7vm8 TIL the band The Band was formed in Canada and made up of mostly Canadians
vPp9B TIL While traveling to the Tehran Conference in 1943 on the USS Iowa, FDR’s ship was almost torpedoed by the escorting destroyer USS William D Porter. The incident was caused when one of the destroyer’s crew members failed to remove the primer of the torpedo while doing a training exercise.
rNlZo TIL the Avianca airplane crash of 1990 was caused in part due to the pilots not declaring a fuel emergency to the aircraft controllers. They never actually use the word "emergency," so they flew around in holding patterns and eventually ran out of fuel