› added 5 years ago

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TIL that the word "soccer" was originally widely used British slang for "asSOCiation football", and didn't become common in America until they learned it from the British during WWII. It didn't become unpopular in the UK until the '80s, as a direct response to its use by Americans

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0wkxR TIL in 1967, the Nigerian Civil War was halted for 48 hours so that both sides could watch Pelé play in Lagos.
k6AB TIL that Pinball was removed from Windows Vista, because the original code was written by an outside company and Microsoft couldn’t find the collision detector in the code!
dxx7 TIL the book “And Then There Were None” was first released with the title “Ten Little Niggers” in 1939
kOgwe TIL an operation in the Spring of 1945 named “White Buses” was organized by the Swedish Red Cross and Danish Govt to rescue people in concentration camps. Using white buses with the Red Cross seal they were able to get over 15,000 people to safety in neutral Switzerland
5YrGk TIL Honeybees can be trained to locate landmines due to their acute sense of smell. Croatian scientists mixed a sugar solution with a small amount of TNT — and after about five minutes of hunting for this doped sugar solution, the honeybees are trained to flock to the smell of TNT.