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TIL the word “impossible” dropped in use by 50% over the course of the 20th century

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e04Vb TIL that during WWI, France built a 'Fake Paris' near its capital city to confuse German pilots.
P1e1g TIL: birds exhibit very jerky movements mainly for depth perception — quickly switching which eye is looking at something enables comparison between viewpoints, much like humans constantly compare views from their two eyes which the brain uses to create a 3D picture.
VBkxZ TIL about Chewang Norphel, an engineer who created 15 artificial glaciers in the Ladakh region of India, a high altitude cold desert drier than the Sahara, increasing water access to many villages transforming the lives of thousands. He was called "The Iceman of Ladakh".
9Gy7 TIL in 1923, a Mississippi association developed an influential set of recommendations about street-sign shapes whose impact is still felt today. The recommendations were based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive, idea: the more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes.
P1W1E TIL that a couple wrote a 'spur of the moment' letter to Buckingham Palace inviting Queen Elizabeth II to their wedding; she unexpectedly did show up.