
u/NateNate60

TIL in 1891, a UK company advertised a "carbolic smoke ball" which it said could cure any disease, and promised £100 (£11k in 2025) to anyone who used it and got sick. A woman who got the flu after using it asked for the £100, but the company said the promise wasn't legally binding. She sued and won
en.wikipedia.orgTIL in 1987, Chinese artist Xu Bing published a book containing thousands of made-up Chinese characters, arranged like a Ming dynasty woodblock manuscript. People in China now use the title of his book (天書) as shorthand to mean "incomprehensible gibberish" or "nonsense".
en.wikipedia.orgSynchrony Bank applied a payment made on the due date for my PayPal Cashback Mastercard to the next day, charged interest, then refused to waive it when asked
I pay my credit cards off regularly every month and I set reminders to do so. This credit card had a due date of 17th June. I paid this credit card through my PayPal account on the due date, and the transaction log generated by PayPal showed a payment date of 17th June. The only way to pay this card online is through PayPal. I immediately got an e-mail from PayPal thanking me for making a payment. That e-mail was dated 17th June.
Edit: The cutoff time for payments was 23:59.
Shortly after midnight on 18th June, I got an e-mail from Synchrony Bank saying it would post to my account later that day.
Then on this next statement (today), I see I got hit with $66 in interest and I called them to inquire about it, and they said their system logged my payment shortly after midnight. I complained about this and they said it must have something to do with time zones because their systems ran on Eastern Time while my address was in the Pacific Time Zone. I told them I made the payment on time shortly before 21:00 PT (which would be midnight ET) and I asked if they could waive the interest charge.
They said that the system will automatically charge interest even if the payment is "one second late" and they would not remove the interest charge under any circumstances, although the late fee could be waved (there wasn't one, because I had made a partial payment earlier in the month using extra money I had in my PayPal balance). I told them I would pay off the account and close it right then and there if that was their attitude towards it. And I did.
Should have known better than to trust the customer service of a PayPal product.
TIL in 1927 Liberian election, incumbent president Charles D. B. King was re-elected with 229,527 votes, despite there only being 19,000 registered voters, an impressive 1,208% of the vote. This election was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most fraudulent election in history.
en.wikipedia.orgIn the extremely rural parts of China, there are judges who roam the mountainous countryside with their clerks and bailiffs, hearing cases in makeshift "circuit courts", allowing remote villages to access the judicial system and resolve disputes. (The national emblem is carried around on their back)
TIL in 2012, South Korean activist Roh Su-hui made an unauthorised visit to North Korea to promote Korean unification. He was arrested by South Korean authorities as soon as he stepped back over the DMZ and was jailed for 4 years, which North Korean state media called a violation of human rights.
en.wikipedia.orgTIL in the late 17th century, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse in London, which was popular with seamen, started posting shipping-related news. Soon, people began gambling there over which ships would return from sea. Lloyd's of London eventually became the largest insurance marketplace in Britain.
en.wikipedia.orgCanadian Kraft Dinner (left) is oranger than the American version
TIL when the French National Convention ordered the arrest of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor II (27th July 1794), his brother Augustin volunteered to be arrested too in solidarity. They were both guillotined the next day.
en.wikipedia.orgTIL in 1888, Princess Isabel of Brazil signed the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), abolishing slavery in the country. The resulting backlash from Brazil's slave-holding upper class was one of the direct causes of the coup d'état which toppled the Brazilian monarchy a year later.
en.wikipedia.orgAccused scammer expecting $700,000 in gold instead receives chocolate coins
Selected quotations:
> [Gold dealer] Soldat, in early May, called the Kent County Sheriff's Office, which quickly recognised the gold-buying scam. This one, based out of India, where scammers convinced the [79-year-old] widow, by computer and phone, that her social security number had been compromised.
> Sgt. Scott Dietrich, KCSO: The suspects, posing as federal agents, talked them through, "We don't want you to lose all your money; you need to take all the money out of your accounts and go buy gold bars." > > ... > > Sgt. Dietrich: We had our detectives get on it right away. They developed a suspect, using several different techniques, including licence plate readers, we were able to locate who the suspect was and determined that he was coming from out of state.
> Soldat: So, when the undercover detectives showed up, dressed as an 80-year-old woman, we had to quickly throw together a package quickly, with something that looked like gold coins. Some of the employees here had the brilliant idea of using some of our chocolate coins.
> So in the end, [the alleged scammer] Youg Chohan got chocolate coins, and two twenty year felonies: false pretenses, and using a computer to commit a crime. He remains here in the Kent County jail as the case works its way through the court system.