› added 4 years ago

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TIL 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks' painting is quite large - 6'7 x 11'9 - and it took Ilya Repin eleven (!) years to complete it

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R7Rd8 TIL back when the NY subways used tokens, criminals would jam the slot and then suck out the token with their mouths. To discourage this, subway workers would put hot chili powder in the slots.
bKr4 TIL Nova Scotia provides Boston with an annual Christmas tree in commemoration for the city’s humanitarian efforts after the Halifax Explosion; history’s greatest man-made pre-nuclear explosion.
X0ZwX TIL about Planet Nine, a hypothetical Ninth Planet in our Solar System that appears to have gravitational effects on a cluster of objects past the orbit of Neptune, and is 5-10x bigger than the Earth
0wNoN TIL in the 17th century, black cats were burned bc they were "the devil". Black cats were spared if they possessed a small amount of white fur anywhere on their bodies, thought of as "God's thumbprint". 95% of black cats today have a small white spot on their chest due to the "UN-natural selection".
1a5Yr TIL in war it is illegal under the Geneva Convention to pretend to be injured in order to trick the enemy