› added 11 months ago

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TIL Russia has leased a 12-mile circle of Kazakhstan named Baikonur. Its purpose is for space operations.

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PYA6w TIL Scurvy used to be the scourge of the navy, killing sailors on long voyages. Now it's a blight to evolutionary biologists. They just don't know why it exists in humans. It's only in the primates - gorillas, chimps, humans, and a few monkeys - that the body stops producing this necessary vitamin.
VB0n8 TIL of Feretron dance - a tradition of moving (bowing) a feretron, mobile relgious icon, in a dancing manner. It originates from Wejherowo Poland and is still practiced today.
80Xb TIL a 20-year old kid successfully climbed to the summit of Mount Everest and snowboarded his way down to the base camp. He only had 4 years of snowboarding experience prior to the stunt.
L8v0 TIL of Vladimir Komarov. When the Soyouz Spacecraft catastrophically failed in orbit, he impossibly managed to manually pilot the craft to re-enter Earth’s orbit, only to perish because both the main AND backup parachutes failed. He died “cursing those who had put him inside a botched spaceship”.
D1kLJ TIL: Jean Meslier (1664-1729) was a French Catholic priest, actually an atheist, who left after his death an entire book criticizing religion