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TIL Quarantine is from Italian 'quaranta giorni', meaning "forty days", used in 14th-15th-century Venetian dialect and designating the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic

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Z8y6v TIL that the two largest pearls in the world were both found in Palawan, Philippines. The largest one weighs 75lbs and is said to be worth $100M. It was found by a fisherman, hid it under his bed and forgot about it for 10 years, the second is 14lbs and is known as the Pearl of Lao Tzu, worth $52M.
gaQy TIL that the same Muslim family (the Nuseibeh or Nusaybah clan) have been the door openers at the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for over 1300 years. They have acted as both custodians of the church and as mediators between the various Christian sects represented there.
YpmRW TIL 'Desire paths' is the term for the paths that are naturally created by people's footfalls when they walk around paved paths. Some universities and hospitals have avoided these by waiting to see where they formed naturally, then paving over established desire paths.
LDWZ TIL a quasar group called LQG is the largest known structure in the Universe. The group is so large that it would take a vehicle traveling at the speed of light some 4 billion years to cross it
kJPZW TIL there's a live stream for the bridge between Buffalo, NY and Fort Erie, Ont. that has been operating for 18 months straight