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7

TIL that in Imperial Japan the upper house of the Diet (parliament) included not just peers, but 66 representatives of the 6,000 highest taxpayers.

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4kl16 TIL after the Crimean War, Queen Victoria praised soldiers’ facial hair as the mark of "real fighting men". Mustaches became mandatory until 1916, mainly because gas masks required a proper seal, prompting the army to drop the almost 60 year old rule and made them optional.
Wjao TIL on October 24 1975, 90% of Iceland’s women refused to work, cook or look after children. Every ten years, on the anniversary of this initial strike, women stop all work to demonstrate their important positions and continue the struggle for equality.
169wD TIL The Pharos Lighthouse would have been over a hundred meters tall
PenV TIL there is a village in the Netherlands comprised entirely of people with dementia. It’s been called a “Truman Show for the elderly.”
BgdYb TIL that in addition to names like “Hope”, “Felicity”, and “Prudence”, Puritans also named their children things like “Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world- to-save”, “Damned”, and “Fly-fornication”.