› added 12 years ago

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TIL that tribes in the Amazon are using technology like GPS and Google Earth to map their lands, monitor for illegal logging and mining, and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions including knowledge of medicinal plants

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0dRW5 TIL During WW2, Chinese forces opened the dikes on the Yellow River to slow the Japanese army. This resulted in an estimated 400,000 to 800,000 drownings and displaced millions. The course of the Yellow River moved several hundred kilometers.
QJjRa TIL about the Abbeville Institute, an institution of Southern professors that extol the virtues of the Confederacy. Their leader is tied to the League of the South, a white nationalist group.
m1VRE TIL Mount Everest is named after Sir George Everest despite him having zero connection to the mountain (he never even saw it) and against his own wishes. He objected to the naming on the grounds that "Everest" could not be easily written in Hindi nor pronounced by the local people.
R7Qe9 TIL that Grand Duke Alexis, son of Russian Tsar Alexander II, made regular overseas trips to have tattoos done by master artists, including a journey to Japan to get an elaborate dragon tattoo covering his entire right arm - and at the end of the 19th century, was the most tattooed person in Europe
PkPG TIL that the strategy guide for Fallout: New Vegas is longer than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”