› added 8 years ago

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TIL that a study estimated that pharmaceutical companies spend more money on advertising than they do on research and development.

aLZ0 TIL Marines taught Sergeant Reckless, a horse who held official rank in the United States military, battlefield survival skills such as how not to become entangled in barbed wire and to lie down when under fire. She learned to run for a bunker upon hearing the cry, “incoming!”
JYAD1 TIL Before it was declared a public domain in 2016, Warner/Chappell has been collecting an estimated $2 million annually from people who use the "Happy Birthday" song, mainly in creative works like movies and television shows.
Zp4vQ TIL the Olympic Village where athletes stayed for the 1980 games was a prison. Funding to build the accommodations would only approved if it could be used for something else after the games concluded. It became a federal correctional institute.
KY0G9 TIL Violet Jessop is most well known for having survived the sinking of both the RMS Titanic in 1912 and her sister ship the HMHS Britannic in 1916, as well as having been onboard the eldest of the three sister ships, the RMS Olympic, when it collided with the British warship HMS Hawke in 1911
01Pp TIL That the Soviet Union, and now Russia, have a fail-deadly system which automatically launches a full scale nuclear attack in the event that authoritative command is incapacitated. It uses light, seismic, radioactive, and overpressure systems to activate the launch. It is still in use today.