› added 5 years ago

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TIL there are more than 3,800 types of potato in Peru

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E11Wd TIL about prince rupert's drop - quick cooled glass beads that survived up to 20 tons of pressure.
N8Y1 TIL that pre-columbian population of the Americas is estimated to have been 50-100 million people. 90% of the indigenous population died from diseases imported by europeans, most of which got infected and died without direct contact - fuelling the legend of an empty continent ready to be seized
N7mm6 TIL that the central part of a pepper that holds the seeds is called the placenta. Ew.
MMjA TIL: Dubai has no address system, no zip codes, no area codes and no postal system. For a package to be sent properly, the sender would have to leave proper directions to the destination of said package.
GAxj5 TIL 'lingua franca' originally referred to the Mediterranean Lingua Franca (also called Sabir), a pidgin used around the Mediterranean Sea by diplomats and traders, consisting mostly of Italian and Spanish, with loanwords from Greek, Arabic, Slavic languages, and Turkish