› added 3 years ago

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TIL: In the early 1900s, some American parents started the trend of transporting their children by mail. The first child to be mailed was 8-month-old James Beagle. He was sent a few miles away to his grandmother for 15 cents (insured for 50 dollars). The process was made illegal a few years later.

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nWNkb TIL Due to ice cover, Antarctica has the highest average surface elevation of all the continents at around 2000m above sea level (for comparison, the highest peak in the British Isles, Ben Nevis in Scotland, is 1343m)
pll4 TIL: Game Boy was the first video game console to be played in space by Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov. The game he played was Tetris.
Br59k TIL Lewis Keseburg, one of the survivors of the Donner Party that practiced cannibalism, started a brewery, a hotel, and a restaurant after his rescue.
j0Ov TIL That in 2007, renown violinist Joshua Bell once played 6 Bach pieces at a metro station in DC. He played some of the hardest songs ever on a $3,500,000 violin for 45 minutes, and made $32 with 6 people watching. He frequently sells out shows for $100 a piece. There was no applause.
9w8BD TIL Trick-or-Treating originated in Canada