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397

TIL that it is impossible to get the true measure of the coastline of any nation on the planet due to something called the Coastline Paradox. For example the CIA measures the USA's coastline as 18,924 miles whereas NOAA measures it as 95,471 miles.

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VMPLp TIL that ‘smell dispensers’ mimicking the smell of lion shit is used to scare off deer and wild boar despite these animals having never met a lion.
Lkn0d TIL of George Remus, who after being released from jail for bootlegging, murdered his estranged wife in broad daylight. She had stolen his fortune and attempted to have him killed after running off with a corrupt federal agent. He was acquitted by a jury after only 19 minutes of deliberation.
9Zr TIL Pope Stephen VI put his dead predecessor Pope Formosus on trial, dressed in Papal gowns and found him guilty of disloyalty and of grasping for ecclesial power. His punishment was 3 broken fingers and being thrown in the Tiber.
4k8Q6 TIL about the Novgorod Republic a medieval state, with a democratic government far in advanced of the rest of Europe, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, from the 12th to 15th centuries.
XEx8r TIL that the 1936 film 'Circus' - Stalin's favourite and the most successful of all time within the Soviet Union - was about an American woman with a Mixed Race son, who finds acceptance in the USSR. The movie's climax had the boy being held and sung to lovingly by various Soviet ethnic groups.