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TIL the tiny island country of Tokelau’s electricity is generated entirely by solar power. However, when it is overcast outside, the island runs on generators powered by coconut oil.

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V5e8 TIL after the release of Gayla Peevey’s “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” (1953) a campaign was launched to give her a hippopotamus for Christmas. The campaign succeeded & she was presented with an actual hippopotamus, which she donated to the city zoo. The hippopotamus lived for nearly 50 years
0w0AL TIL about the "Oozlefinch", a featherless bird that flies backward at supersonic speed carrying Nike missiles and was the unofficial mascot of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery.
rRZRy TIL that during the Prague Uprising at the end of WWII, two escaped British POWs approached a garrison of Waffen-SS and claimed to represent a regiment of paratroopers and threatened to call in an airstrike on the building they occupied. The Germans surrendered.
Zp4bD TIL that Otto Warmbier was an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 on a charge of subversion. In June 2017, he was released by North Korea in a vegetative state and died soon afterward. His family was awarded $240k in seized North Korean assets.
lWxA TIL When a coal mine catches fire, it burns for decades or even centuries. There are thousands of these fires across the world at any given moment.