› added 4 years ago

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TIL of the sinking of the PS General Slocum, the second worst disaster in terms of lives lost in NYC, in which many people drowned because the life jackets had been filled with iron in order to meet minimum weight requirements of the time.

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oR19W TIL Two-thirds of Toronto's original Chinatown was demolished for the construction of Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall in 1965
XwXX TIL IKEA has designed and deployed a $1000 flat-pack refugee shelter that, like the company’s famous modular furniture, is boxed up shipped with all the tools needed to construct it
V6nG TIL forrest growth in the US has exceeded harvest since the 1940s, and that the US has more trees now than at any time in the past 100 years.
69XDY TIL that there are only 20 ancient lakes (defined as carrying water for more than a million years) in the world, with only 3 in North America (Tahoe, Tule, Pingualuk). Nearly all are tectonic (i.e. rift zones) in origin, however 2 are from meteorite craters (Pingualuk in Canada, Bosumtwi in Ghana)
8epOX TIL The King James Version Bible didn't exist for most of Shakespeares life, and came out only 5 years before he died.