› added 10 years ago

74

TIL that ExonMobil, Cheveron, and, BP were once part of Standard Oil, founded by John D. Rockefeller, before it was broken up by the US Supreme Court in 1911.

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xV48w TIL: Nearly 250,000 Americans die every year from medical errors, making it the third leading cause of death in the country.
oBLXK TIL Students in Finland have coveralls to wear to parties
0dkny TIL different kinds of tea (black, green, white, oolong) come from the same plant. The only difference is in how the leaves are processed.
X0ZlQ TIL the SR-71 Blackbird used an Astro-inertial navigation system, a special camera pointed at the sky. Its "blue light" source star tracker could see stars day and night and “was good enough to limit drift to 1,000 ft (300 m) off the direction of travel at Mach 3.”
9YKPB TIL that there is a difference between an acronym and an initialism. An acronym is when the initials of the words form a new word (e.g. NATO = Nayto) and an initialism is when the initials do not make a new word but are instead read out individually (e.g. BBC = B B C)