› added 3 months ago

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TIL Calama, Chile (pop 147,886) has an average annual precipitation of 5 mm (0.20 inches). For comparison - Dubai has an annual precipitation of 79.2 mm (3.12 inches).

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LmRZ TIL that in Iceland books are exchanged on Christmas Eve & you spend the rest of the night reading. Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country; & new books are typically published only during the Christmas season. This frenzy is called Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas Book Flood.”
MYAW TIL the most successful interrogator of the Nazi regime used unspeakable techniques such as joyrides in fighter planes, walks through the countryside, and trips to the zoo.
e0vyL TIL the myth of the man-eating piranha was started as part of a spectacle to impress Theodore Roosevelt
R759 TIL in 1995 a man robbed a bank with lemon juice on his face. Since lemon juice makes for invisible ink he thought it would render his face invisible on camera.
N7WXe TIL that the reason old pubs have "Ye Old" instead of "The Old" is because when the printing press was invented in Germany, they didn't have any letters for the old letter Thorn, which made a "th" sound. Thorn ultimately was replaced with Y because they looked similar until the Th start was popular.