› added 5 years ago

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TIL that immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, her secretary will inform the Prime Minister via a secure phone line by saying "London Bridge is down", thus initiating Operation London Bridge, a detailed procedure that outlines the action for days and weeks after the sovereign's death.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

wLj1W TIL that in 1604 the last recorded Milky Way supernova - visible to the naked eye in daytime - was the incident that catalyzed and laid the foundation for Galileo’s understanding that earth is not the center of the universe.
lo96a TIL that at the peak of its hyperinflation, the one trillion dollar Zimbabwean dollar note was worth 0.40 american dollars.
OGyba TIL that Mauritania’s Moor population historically views female obesity as a status symbol, and higher-income girls are fattened with milk to make them more desirable to potential suitors.
kJxd1 TIL: UK Police vehicles are exempt from requiring insurance under Section 144(2)(b) of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
KO04G Protons are made up of even smaller particles called quarks, so you might expect that simply adding up the quarks’ masses should give you the proton’s mass. However, that sum is much too small to explain the proton’s bulk. And new, detailed calculations show that only 9 percent of the proton’s heft comes from the mass of constituent quarks. The rest of the proton’s mass comes from complicated effects occurring inside the particle, researchers report in the Nov. 23 Physical Review Letters.