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TIL Australians have an unofficial holiday, Gravy Day (Dec. 21) based on a 1996 Paul Kelly song about a man in jail writing to his family about longing to be with them at Christmas

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4Ly6 TIL A South African IT company preferred to use a pigeon to transport a 4GB flash drive over 80 km (50 mi) instead of using the country’s biggest ISP’s ADSL. Including downloading, it took two hours for the data to arrive, the same amount of time it took to tranfer 4% of the data over the ADSL.
nrgB TIL There is a tribe in India that has passed down for generations the art of manipulating tree roots to create a system of “living” bridges.
dDa6j TIL that Henry VIII kept an African grey parrot who amused itself by calling the boatman across the water to the palace, who was then paid for his efforts
j6K6p TIL that Andrew Sachs who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, suffered second degree acid burns, whilst filming the episode The Germans, as well as a head injury from being hit by John Cleese with a faulty prop.
4agb TIL in 1921 leftover WWI planes were used to drop firebombs on Tulsa’s black community resulting in the “Black Wall Street” burning to the ground.