› added 11 years ago

93

TIL Koko the gorilla is still alive and is 42

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R7ED7 TIL that from 1943-45, British military pilots were issued "escape boots". If they had to bail out over enemy territory, a concealed knife in one boot cоuld bе used to cut away the upper section, and convert them into "ordinary" shoes, which would help the airman pass himself off as a civilian
GAw6E TIL that Edgar Allan Poe wrote his first detective stories after trying to debunk a famous chess-playing "robot" called The Mechanical Turk in 1836. Poe asserted that a mechanical chess player would play perfectly, but noticed that the Turk occasionally erred, and therefore suspected its creation.
J1lK1 TIL that your toenails grow at about the same speed as the average continental plates drift. Tectonic plates drift about 1.5 cm a year. Some regions, such as coastal California, move quite fast in geological terms — almost 5 cm a year.
pYJap TIL Pope Leo XIII awarded a Vatican gold medal to the creator of his favourite brand of cocaine-infused wine and also appeared on a poster endorsing it.
wLYgW TIL Canada has a program where volunteers will give rides to intoxicated people for free