› added 4 months ago

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TIL that all London taxi drivers must take the Knowledge of London test. This involves memorizing nearly every street within a six-mile radius of central London. It also includes learning the blue book which lists 320 routes that must be memorized from start to finish. It takes up to 3 years to do.

grOBW TIL In the 1950s, U.S. poultry firms dumped turkey tails into Samoa markets. Filled with oil used to preen itself, turkey tails are 75% fat and are frequently washed down with a cold Budweiser. Due to its ties to the obesity epidemic, Samoan officials banned turkey tail imports in 2007.
rN5Kd TIL about Zone Rouge, an uninhabitable area of land in France 1,200 square km large that in 1918 was deemed too damaged by lead, mercury, chlorine and arsenic shells from WW1 to be repopulated. At the current rate of recovery, it will take 700 years to make the whole area safe
awp0L TIL "The Legend of Zelda" was not supposed to be the name of the series. It was intended to be called; "The Hyrule Fantasy", with The Legend of Zelda being the first games subtitle. When ported to the west, "The Hyrule Fantasy" was dropped, which inspired Nintendo to use Zelda as the franchise name.
K9bR TIL that the Dwarves in the Tolkien universe are supposed to represent Jewish people. Tolkien stated:“The Dwarves of course are quite obviously—wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.”
9YjO6 TIL that an entomologist called Justin Schmidt allowed plenty of venomus insects to sting him in order to record the pain intensity in what's called "Schmidt pain Scale".