Post * vPegK — Curious Curator

› added 1 year ago

54

TIL When (Anheuser-Busch chairman) Gussie Busch purchased the St. Louis Cardinals, he attempted to name their ballpark "Budweiser Stadium" and was denied due to baseball's alcohol advertising rules. In response, he named it "Busch Stadium" and launched the first Busch branded beer two years later.

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M5Ma TIL of the ADE 651, a fake bomb detector consisting a swivelling antenna mounted via a hinge to a plastic handgrip, requiring no battery, and supposedly charged by the user’s static electricity. It sold for $60,000 until its creator was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for fraud.

JYdVQ TIL People all over the world believe chocolate can help you lose weight because a Journalist Scammed The Media Into Spreading Bad Chocolate Science to prove a point about non peer reviewed science articles.

YpPbd TIL During a 1989 Christmas television broadcast, Santa Claus encouraged all children to hold the phone to the TV, tricking them into dialing a 1-900 number that automatically charged several dollars to their parents' phone bill.

PYa8J TIL that Maya Angelou became San Francisco's first black streetcar conductor at age 16. When asked why she wanted the job, she replied, "I like the uniforms. I like people."

x6p17 TIL that the 401(k) retirement plan was created as a tax shelter for rich executives. Before its introduction, companies would create deferred savings accounts for executives so to avoid paying taxes, but the government caught on and formalized the rules as the 401k.