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TIL that in 1671, a man named François Vatel was in charge of a 2000-person banquet to be held in the honor of Louis XIV. Vatel became distraught after a delivery of seafood was late, driving him to take his own life by running himself through his sword.

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vPBd4 TIL that when Dana White and the Fertittas, purchased the UFC from its previous owners in 2001 for $2 million, they received only the brand name and an old octagon, other assets were already sold off including the domain name UFC.com which had been sold to a company named 'User Friendly Computers"
M7BjV TIL about the 1937 marriage of 22-year-old Charlie Johns and 9-year-old Eunice Winstead, causing national attention after an article was written in Life magazine. It led to the state of Tennessee introducing a new law setting the minimum marriage age as 14. Other US jurisdictions followed similarly.
4kApw TIL that Bud Light's big marketing push in the 80s was Spuds Mackenzie, a dog presented as "a cool dude". Spuds was played by a female dog, named Honey Tree Evil Eye.
Bra1e TIL of Qian Xuesen, a Chinese aerospace engineer who was a founding member of JPL. When he was stripped of his security clearances during the Red Scare despite protests by his colleagues, he moved back to China where he became well known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry"
B8Br TIL a scientist in London has found a drug that acts as a synthetic alcohol and even has a “sober-up” pill that will quickly reverse the effects