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TIL that Janissaries would place spoons on their hats in order to symbolize “The Brotherhood of the Spoon”. It was meant to further emphasize that Janissaries would live, eat, and fight together.

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Rkn8 TIL that composer Charles Ives proposed that a 20th Amendment should be added to the U.S. Constitution that allowed people to submit legislative proposals to Congress. Members of Congress would then cull the proposals, selecting 10 each year as referendums for popular vote by the nation’s electorate
6EXJ TIL the computer was not invented in the 1940’s. In the 1830’s Charles Babbage designed a mechanical, steam powered beast with a CPU, RAM, even a printer, that could do most of the things early electronic computers could. It was never built.
1ErP TIL of Kim Gwang Suk, a North Korean gymnast who competed at the Barcelona Olympics; her age was given as 17, but she was missing her front teeth and may have been as young as 10. Aside from an Olympic torch relay, her subsequent life and whereabouts are unknown.
neWn7 The most popular artificial material on Earth isn’t steel, plastic, or aluminum — it’s concrete. Thousands of years ago, we used it to build civilizations, but then our knowledge of how to make it was lost. Here’s how we discovered concrete, forgot it, and then finally cracked the mystery of what makes it so strong.
NX4LP TIL that Catalan families take care of a log named Tio de Nadal from Dec 8 until Christmas, when they hit it with wet sticks and sing songs until it shits presents.