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TIL that in 2009, British PM Gordon Brown hand-wrote a letter of condolence to a mother whose son had died in Afghanistan, in which he misspelled the son's surname. The Sun (a tabloid) wrote a scathing article criticizing his mistake. In this article, the paper misspelled the same name.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

69Mk7 TIL if you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1000 copies (1,500 if a children's book) and distribute them to libraries throughout the country.
wByJ TIL of the “second brain” in humans located in the gastrointestinal tract and called the enteric nervous system. More than 90% of the body’s serotonin lies in the gut, as well as about 50% of the body’s dopamine.
vnxB TIL that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys wrote “California Girls” during his first experience with LSD. He sat in front of a piano and played what are now the first four notes of the song over and over again for about an hour, until the rest of the song suddenly came to him.
NO1b TIL that in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, residents of Sendai received 10-30 seconds and Tokyo 60 seconds warning from Japan’s Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system before the major seismic waves hit. Alerts pushed to cellphones, TV broadcasts and web pages around the country.
69Bl7 TIL In 2010, the US Air Force used 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles to build a supercomputer for the Department of Defense. It was called the Condor Cluster. They used PS3’s because it was more cost-efficient.