› added 11 years ago

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TIL it’s said that when Napoleon claimed to have the power to destroy the Catholic Church, a cardinal responded, “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

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LQrYQ TIL that Jordan Rice, a 13-year-old Australian boy, became a symbol of courage during devastating floods when he sacrificed his life to save his younger brother. Despite his fear of water, his selfless act continues to inspire as a story of true heroism.
5VOpB TIL that there is a brand of potato chips developed for prison commissaries that was so popular on the inside that it became available to the mass market.
y9ma TIL the Mary Poppins word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious breaks down into: super- “above”, cali- “beauty”, fragilistic- “delicate”, expiali- “to atone”, and -docious “educable”, with the roughly meaning, “atoning for educability through delicate beauty.
d8JyZ TIL that the word "twit" which eventually became "tweet" was coined by Iconfactory, which created Twitterrific (a third party twitter client). This was the same company which designed the first bird icon for thier own app, which eventually became synonymous with Twitter.
5VWYp TIL Mi’kmaq used birch bark canoes or hollowed-out hemlock logs fitted with long wooden runners or “skates” to sprint over the ice and water to Prince Edward Island. The British copied this design in the 1800s for Royal Mail delivery