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TIL: The middle east had a “cold period” in the 900s-1000s and in the winter the Tigris river would Freeze and they would have thick snow on the ground for months in Baghdad.

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6E9jw TIL that though Thomas Kinkade designed his paintings, the widely sold prints were produced through a semi-industrial process in which prints were factory produced and then manually touched up by low-level apprentices who embellished the prefabricated base.
QJY5k TIL around the year 180,000,000 earth days will start lasting 25 hours
KOYJQ An extraordinary collection of images from Burns Archive shows the extent to which gas masks were promoted as an essential part of everyday life in the early 20th century. It had been 20 years since the end of World War I, when chlorine gas—and, later, mustard gas—had first been used. The estimates of total casualties from this form of chemical warfare are staggering: 88,000 dead and 1,200,000 injured. With war once again on the horizon, Britain and continental Europe began taking early precautions. In 1938, the British government issued 35 million “General Civilian Respirators”. Everyone from ballerinas to surgeons were encouraged to wear the masks.
KYaXB TIL that major subscription-based social platforms are seeing a rise in "AI Chatters." These bots are trained on massive datasets of over 500 million private messages to mimic specific human personalities and automate 1-on-1 interactions without the user's knowledge.
QNWx6 TIL the orange is a hybrid between pomelo and mandarin