› added 1 year ago

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TIL: in 1275, the count of Holland exempted the residents of the tiny fishing village of Amsterdam from tolls, attracting large numbers of merchants and putting it on a path to develop into a major trading hub over the centuries

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PY6xL TIL Swedish-built cars -- Saabs and Volvos -- are specifically reinforced so that the occupants will survive if they hit a moose.
jNMdE TIL of Albert Stevens, a house painter that was unwittingly injected with plutonium and survived the highest known dose of radiation in any human
v144L TIL about Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African child kidnapped to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great. The tsar freed him and raised him as his godson. Gannibal became a Major-General and the Governor of Reval. He is the great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, considered the greatest Russian poet.
oRy57 TIL that the 10,000 steps a day was an arbitrary number that came from a marketing campaign for an early pedometer launched ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The number was chosen because the Japanese character for 10,000 resembles a person walking.
dW67 TIL Sears sold mail-order homes, between 1908 and 1940, as part of their Modern Homes program. They arrived as a kit, and included many modern conveniences, such as indoor plumbing. Some of these homes still exist today.