› added 1 year ago

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TIL when Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft had an asteroid named after him, he wrote a constitution for it's future inhabitants including articles that forbid use of imperial measurement units, outlaw the use of apostrophes, and limit the length of tax forms to one page.

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via reddit.com

OoB8a TIL: Chocolate for most of its 4,000-year history was actually consumed as a bitter beverage rather than as a sweet edible treat
Z8rP4 TIL that chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8,000,000 in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy”.
wQ6M TIL the Ibrahim Prize, an annual award given to former African heads of states who have advanced democracy and peacefully transitioned power gifts $5,000,000 plus and additional $200,000 a year after that. It has only been awarded three times since 2008.
9wAnm TIL that, inspired by the Maginot Line in France, the British built a defensive network in Hong Kong. Called the Gin Drinkers Line or Oriental Maginot Line, it was designed to hold off a Japanese invasion for six months. Hit by understaffing and a malaria outbreak, it only lasted two days.
l71Er TIL Trinity College Dublin's oldest PhD graduated at 84 with her thesis "Harry Potter and the Unconscious Dimension" She wondered, why are the Harry Potter books, which are written for children, so popular with adults?