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TIL that in 1913 the first practical thermal solar ‘power plant’ was built in Egypt, it generated power using polished steel to focus the sunlight. Unfortunatly WW1 broke out and the power plant was abandoned due to conflict in the area and oil became a much more attractive energy source.

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BrJBr TIL when Martin replicated Joan Baez's Martin 1929 0-45 (purchased in 1962), they included a replica of the note "Too bad you're a communist" which they found inside her original guitar. It was put there by some unidentified repair person sometime in that guitar's 40-ish year career.
J1Xxm TIL The Twin Roman Emperors Caracalla and Geta in Gladiator II Were Real Brothers. But Not Twins.
wLNkE TIL that both the Carpathia (which rescued Titanic's passengers) and the Californian (which was nearby but allegedly never saw Titanic's distress signals) were both sunk in WW1. Carpathia lies in 600 feet of water off of Ireland and California lies somewhere off of Greece but has never been found
KYE54 Today I learned about the 4 astronomer nuns who helped map nearly 500,000 stars in the late 1800s and early part of the 20th century. Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri.
neJ6d TIL of Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen was a 6’7” tall walrus-spearing, peg-legged, anti-Semite-clobbering Danish explorer and badass old-school 1900s explorer who escaped certain death by molding his own faeces into a knife and using it to carve through a solid wall of ice.