› added 10 years ago

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TIL English verbs used to have a “frequentative” form, which gave us words like “batter” from “bat”, “dazzle” from “daze”, and “trample” from “tramp”

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9RkG TIL one of the founding members of modern Wicca pretended to raise the dead by reading a Swiss roll recipe backwards.
vd9K TIL that despite fighting against Nazi troops, with 17,000 dying in combat, Colonial French (Black) troops were not allowed to liberate Paris because of their skin colour. To ensure that a French regiment was allowed to liberated Paris, De Gaulle was forced to use Spanish (white) soldiers
5VlG9 TIL that, concerning deregulation, the Washington Consensus' original 10 points only called to abolish rules that impede market entry or restrict competition; rules based on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and oversight of financial institutions were explicitly excepted
KY9M9 TIL that there's a reason why smoke alarm tend to need battery replacement at night. As the temperature drops at night, the battery’s chemical reaction slows and the voltage lowers. The internal circuit then detects this as battery needing replacement.
RRL9 TIL there’s a militant Islamist group called MILF