› added 4 years ago

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TIL In 1850, a man who claimed he was the brother of Jesus started a rebellion in China that killed 30 million people. It was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

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nnBW TIL that the SR-71 Blackbird was never hit by the over 4,000 missiles fired at it during its 25-year service. The SOP was to accelerate to faster than the missile could catch up with it.
KOG4w TIL: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, discoverer of the X-Rays, chose the name himself and didn't want them to be named after him. It is used worldwide with exception to his native Germany where they are call Röntgenstrahlen (Röntgen-Ray)
neWLW TIL the city of Melbourne gave email addresses to trees so locals could report problems, but they received thousands of love letters instead
DEYJ TIL when JRR Tolkien was asked for proof of Aryan descent in Germany, 1938, he replied, “If impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.”
x68RD TIL One artist created the mascot for 100+ universities and many are duplicates due to historical regionalization of schools.