› added 7 years ago

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TIL in the year 1000, to save Iceland from civil war, both parties elected the wisest man to suggest a peaceful solution. He decided on a mass conversion to Christianity that tolerated pagan worship in private. And everyone agreed. He even converted himself.

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wXrY TIL that a scientist breached security at Los Alamos by leaving an orange on his desk, and that any spherical object became a “nuclear secret” once it passed into a secure area of the laboratory, as it could be taken as a model for the plutonium pit that drives a nuclear weapon.
5VPBB TIL that underneath Paul Klee's famous paining "Angelus Novus," which inspired Walter Benjamin's "angel of history," lies a portrait of the radical early modern theologian Martin Luther.
kJnOW TIL Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme".
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VM65D TIL that IPA (India pale ale) was originally a British beer brewed for export to India that was specially formulated to survive the long sea voyage.