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TIL The Berlin Wall started to be torn down in 1989 by mistakenly-empowered citizens after an East German spokesman misspoke at a press conference and mentioned immediate border crossing privileges for every citizen.

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x6MNw TIL the Royal Navy captured a Brazilian slave ship in 1827, renamed her after an old English folk song, (that also happened to be the name of an English slave ship in the 1700s), and assigned it to fight against the slave trade.
oR8R TIL - Gravity Probe B has the most perfect spheres ever created by man “If GP-B gyroscope’s were enlarged to the size of the Earth, the tallest mountain would be eight feet tall.”
KO9Z9 TIL that the London Underground is getting hotter because the clay that the tunnels are dug into spent decades absorbing heat and has now reached maximum capacity, so it is now insulating the tunnels. When the tube was first built it was much cooler than the city above.
16Mwd TIL Cashews actually begin as fruit from a large tropical evergreen tree. The tree produces vibrant red flowers that give way to juicy, apple-like structures—but these aren’t the real fruit. The true cashew “fruit” is the kidney-shaped formation at the end of these so-called apple.
PZoV TIL that Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar because US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero, and each Tic Tac weights JUST under 0.5g