› added 12 years ago

116

TIL Costa Rica has no army, it abolished it in 1949

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XEnRQ TIL that blind people don't see black or anything in particular. They see literally nothing.
9wwOm TIL that pretty much evry other country bases the beginning of Summer and Winter on the solstices. I’m Aussie and here summer always begins on December first; Winter always begins on June first. I used other sources to verify this as well; this one is just the best site where the point is most clear
9aj6 TIL that in 2009, Disney-owned Lucasfilm successfully sued Verizon Wireless over their line of Android phones named “DROID” as “droid” is a registered trademark of LucasFilm. Since the Steve Jobs Trust is one of Disney’s largest shareholders, Jobs’ estate makes money when a DROID is sold.
Lv7Z TIL that in 1746, Jean-Antoine Nollet conducted an experiment in which 200 monks formed a circle (1.6 km in circumference) and were linked by iron wire. He then had electricity pass through them which shocked all the monks simultaneously. He concluded that the speed of electricity was very high.
RQE7 TIL that in the 1960’s, for fear of having their submarine communication cables cut by the Soviets, the US military sent 480,000,000 copper needles into space to secure their communications infrastructure. The needles acted as a mirror for radio waves, enabling communication between distant sites.