› added 9 years ago

102

TIL that the term “cold war” first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George Orwell called “You and the Atomic Bomb.”

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yVlOw TIL although New Brunswick is the only official bilingual province in Canada, the most bilingual province is Quebec (55% of bilingual Canadians) whose only official language is French
5YBjr TIL of a legend of Bodhidharma a Monk who fell asleep wall gazing, to stop it happening again he cut off his eyelids. When his eyelids hit the ground they became the first tea plants. This is apparently why the character for eyelids and tea are the same in Japanese.
aw89L TIL the teeth of thousands of young men being killed on Europe’s battlefields were taken by scavengers and shipped back to England to be used as donor's teeth. This was seen as patriotic.
V5nQ TIL the country we refer to as ‘Mexico’ is actually called the 'United Mexican States’.
9neB TIL: The most successful intelligence operation in the Cold War; emptying supplies of Soviet Union toilet paper, forcing them to use documents, and retrieving these documents after use.