› added 5 years ago

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TIL that in Cape Town, a cannon has been fired everyday since 1806 to signal noon. It was traditionally used so that ships could set their chronometers.

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9YXpM TIL: During the transition from The Soviet Union to Russia, the CSKA, (The Central Red Army Hockey Club) were financially broke. They were saved from bankruptcy by a joint venture between the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Red-Army, Mario Lemieux and actor Michael J. Fox.
RrN1 TIL - The Thorny Devil Lizard is a reptile that channels water that comes into contact with his skin through Hygroscopic grooves to it’s mouth (It can drink water by standing in it).
7Lyx TIL of Robert Peace, a ‘black guy from the hood’ who ended up graduating from Yale with honors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, moving back to his 'hood’ and teaching biology at his old highschool, engineering his own strain of Marijuana and getting killed over a drug deal
GXWj TIL that many quantum mechanical properties can be replicated on the macro scale using silicon droplets bouncing on a sheet of vibrating silicon. These droplets act like quantum mechanical particles and can even replicate Young’s double slit experiment on a human scale.
Br6XD TIL that the full name of the SS in Nazi Germany was the Schutzstaffel, which literally means "protection squadron", reflecting its origins as the Nazi Party's security unit.