› added 12 years ago

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TIL That a small town in Minnesota attempted to secede from the US in 1977 to declare war and lose, thus receiving foreign aid for their failing water system. It worked.

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QJooL TIL There's a German children's song about monkeys searching a coconut, which goes "The monkeys race through the woods, each one wanting to kill the other" and ending in "And the moral of the story: Do not steal coconuts".
Me7r7 Unpredictable extremes of weather could be a huge problem. Simon N. Gosling, a geographer at the University of Nottingham in England, and Robert E. Davis of the University of Virginia agree that hotter weather on average isn't as dangerous as unexpected weather. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April looked at how temperature fluctuations over a single summer affect mortality in vulnerable populations.
xVNr1 TIL that while American Sign Language is NOT universal and vastly different than even other English speaking countries, it is similar to French Sign Language because of frenchman Laurent Clerc who helped found the first school of the Deaf in America.
e0nN5 TIL Dick Bass, the first person to scale the seven summits, was on a flight when he deluged his seatmate for hours with details of his treks on all seven continents. Before they landed, he realized he hadn't asked his new friend anything about himself. "That's OK," the man said, "I'm Neil Armstrong"
rRXg4 TIL In-N-Out Burger used to have a phone number where someone gave you directions to the nearest burger location