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TIL that when Larry Ellison divorced his wife Nancy in 1978, she gave up any claim on his new company for $500. That company, Oracle (the database company), made Ellison the world's eighth-richest person ($130 billion as of today).

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0wdmN TIL that the first humans were apparently Chinese - Peking man was the missing link between ancient ape and modern humans. However, most of the fossil fragments of the Peking man vanished after 1941
BvBx TIL the Wright Bros, after numerous incident-free tests, were poised to make their pitch for the Army airplane contract. With Lt. Thomas Selfridge as passenger, the plane crashed, injuring Orville and killing Selfridge, resulting in the first airplane fatality. They received the contract anyway.
Wkv6o TIL A 2004 American Public Health Association (APHA) resolution called for a moratorium factory farms for growing antibiotic resistance of pathogens, drinking water contamination from waste, severe respiratory problems in workers, and illnesses among people living nearby
X8Dr TIL Eric Carle, the American-born illustrator and writer of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, moved to Germany as a kid in the 1930s, and was conscripted to dig trenches for the German army when he was 15 years old. Now 87 years old, he is one of the youngest surviving WWII veterans.
0wgmy TIL in 1848, the first bridge built over Niagara Falls was started with a kite competition. A boy flew a kite across to the river to the opposite bank. The line he used carried larger and larger cables across the river used to start construction of the bridge