› added 8 years ago

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TIL that Walt Disney bought property in Florida to build a “real city that would never cease to be a blueprint of the future” but after he died, they built Disneyland instead.

pYGAA TIL that in spite of only being a British possession for about a decade prior, Florida remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution, but was returned to the Spanish after American independence was won.
b9MN7 TIL that the katzenklavier ("cat piano") is a hypothetical musical instrument made out of cats. Designed by 17th-century scholar, Athanasius Kircher, it consists of a row of caged cats with different voice pitches. It is to be "played" by driving a nail into the cat's tail to make it yowl
R7Mb4 TIL that we have had the ability to turn Lead and Mercury into Gold since the 50's. It's just cheaper to mine so we don't do it on a commercial scale.
LkKKd TIL in 1999, Kraft met with America's other biggest food companies to discuss the growing public health concerns over packaged and processed foods. They decided to not down-regulate the usage of salt, sugar and fat, as it would make the food taste not as good and their shareholders would lose money.
4XWba TIL of Amsterdam Time, UTC +00:20 and used from 1909 until the Nazis invaded in 1940. That made the Netherlands 20 minutes ahead of London. The reason for this offset was that it was centered on the mean solar time of the tower of the Westerkerk Church in Amsterdam and not on Greenwich Mean Time.