› added 4 years ago

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TIL that the original choice for the capital city of Australia was Dalgety, a town of now only 205 people

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MLN8 TIL in 1926 a Pasadena mailman planted some avocado seeds intending to graft with the desirable Fuerte variety. The graft repeatedly failed on one tree and he was going to cut it down, but was advised to “wait and see what happens”. It became the mother tree from which all Hass avocados originate.
JY7y1 TIL Doggerland is the area of land connecting Great Britain to continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea-levels (6500-6200 BC), turning Great Britain into an island.
0yBy TIL That Napoleon commissioned the development of a system that would allow his troops to communicate at night in the front lines, which was eventually taught to and perfected by 12 year old student Louis Braille.
e0OQg TIL of the Brocken Spectre, the shadow of an observer on a mountain, cast by low sunlight onto clouds below the observer, often with a circular rainbow halo. It is named after the Brocken peak in the Harz Mountains
yQR0w TIL: To get a warm drink can cold takes20-25 minutes in a freezer. If you put it in a bucket of ice, that would halve that time. If you put water in that ice, it'd be cold (+- 5c) enough to drink in about 4-6 minutes, if you put salt in that water, you'd reduce the chill time to just over 2 minutes.