› added 13 years ago

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TIL a Japanese death cult may have built Tesla’s deathray and tested it in Australia

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l7vA5 TIL that Magnus Carlsen intentionally plays non-book "inaccuracies" during opening (moves he knows aren't the best), in order to force the game into a non-book position, so his opponents will have to think for themselves instead of going by memorized opening theory.
wOWJ TIL The Black Death killed half of the current Norweigan population in 1349. Because of this, Norway couldn’t sustain a kingdom and they were soon in a union with Sweden and Denmark.
oRvM7 TIL that between 1998 and 2015, the Defense and Housing and Urban Development departments had reported $21 trillion in "unsupported adjustments". That is, $21 trillion missing in tax payer money; They cannot track it, nor do they know what it was spent on. That's 65,000 lost dollars per American.
5Y8n9 TIL of Little emperor syndrome. A term given to children in China who have been given excessive attention by parents & grandparents due to the one child policy
dDvKE TIL that in the 18th and 19th centuries, cemeteries in Britain used "cemetery guns" to prevent grave robbing. These guns were set up near graves and were designed to discharge when triggered by a tripwire, stopping "body snatchers" who stole corpses to sell to medical schools.