› added 11 years ago

159

TIL that, despite popular belief, Americans actually pay more taxes for healthcare than Canadians, Australians, and Western Europeans.

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oB8Ro TIL Newspeak from "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is based on an actual language proposal - Basic English, a proposed easy-to-learn version of English with only 850 core words.
njA7 TIL Paris Hilton’s grandfather donated 97% of the family fortune and is embarrased of his granddaugher.
rEye TIL “freeway” Rick Ross was a cocaine kingpin in 1980’s Los Angeles, at one point making 2-3 million dollars a week. The kicker? He was illiterate and his cocaine supplier was the CIA, who sold cocaine to illegally finance the Nicaraguan Contras.
PYG7n TIL historians have estimated that from the years 1798 to 1848, the U.S. Navy lost two-thirds as many officers from dueling as from combat.
mRLx TIL language learning site Duolingo makes its money from having its users practice translating a real-world document (e.g from CNN). Duolingo has contracts these websites to translate stories and is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with this business model.