› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Matt Cvetic, a Pittsburgh steel mill worker, was hired by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist party for nine years. His cover was so good that even his own family didn’t know he was undercover and despised him for his beliefs.

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kO8ld TIL that we were not the 'fastest sperm', but rather the lucky ones that reached the egg after many others have broken down the thick layers of cells protecting it.
Zo1G TIL When the half-millennium-old Tiananmen Gate was found to be falling down in the 1960s, it was secretly replaced, bit by bit, with an exact replica, in a successful conspiracy that involved nearly 3,000 people who managed to keep it a secret for years.
AyLw TIL that the Chinese word for “contradiction” is 矛盾, consisting of the characters for “spear” and “shield” respectively. It’s derive from the book “Han Fei Zi” in which a Chu (楚国) merchant proclaimed to sell “spears that could pierce any shield” and “shields that could defend from all spear attacks”
mdAy TIL the native americans planted three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) together so that they would benefit eachother. The corn provides a structure for the beans to climb. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil, and the squash spreads along the ground preventing weeds.
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