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TIL that Abraham Lincoln successfully defended a criminal defendant by using an almanac to challenge a man’s assertion that he saw the murderer “By the light of the moon.”

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via reddit.com

a8jMM TIL that during WWII, the U.S. referred to uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo as 'gems' and removed the mine from maps to maintain secrecy for the Manhattan Project
EgJLw TIL that a cubic kilometer of cumulus cloud weighs around 500,000kg and is still lighter than a cubic kilometer of dry air
VwjG TIL that in 2010 a british policeman drove an Ice cream van into the middle of a riot and played “ice-cream van” music in an attempt to calm the youths. The official report was, ‘humour defused the situation and the trouble stopped’.
N7oEE Like clockwork, every 26 seconds, seismometers across multiple continents have detected a mysterious pulse since at least the early 1960s, and no one knows why.
v574 TIL that slave laborers making tanks for Nazi Germany routinely sabotaged every part they could, and this caused German tanks to be extremely prone to breaking down.