› added 11 months ago

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TIL that Windows in Japan has anime-girl mascots called OS-tans. Each of them has the surname of Madobe (窓辺, meaning By the Windowside) and a new one is created for each operating system starting with Windows 7. They have had various tie in products over the years in addition to promoting Windows OS

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yQ8La TIL a man in Berlin was whipped with a belt in an attack for wearing a Yarmulke (Jewish hat). The man who was whipped wasn't actually Jewish but was trying to convince his Jewish friend he had nothing to worry about wearing a Yarmulke in public.
R5ed8 TIL that in 1966, a beluga whale swam hundreds of kilometers up the Rhine River into Germany — and almost didn’t make it home.
W7MNo TIL that there is such a thing as North Korean Science Fiction, where the Supreme Leader is always right and Evil Americans wander "the depraved streets of New York, where, at night, jazz made people dizzy as if it had stolen their souls."
nWPA7 TIL Abolitionist John Brown had originally asked Frederick Douglass to join him in his raid on Harpers Ferry, but Douglass declined as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal. John Brown was later tried and executed for the raid less than two months after its occurrence.
ZW4v TIL that carrier pigeons only know how to fly back to their home base. The infrastructure that supported this messaging system required regular deliveries of birds between cities and regular release of the birds so they did not imprint on a new location.