› added 5 years ago

81

TIL we get more starlight during the day than at night

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D1w6J TIL that in over 50 years and 10 billion passengers, the Japanese bullet train has never had a single passenger fatality caused by a derailment or collision.
nWjKr TIL about a Chinese man named Zhao C (赵Ｃ), who was forced to change his name when he was 22 years old because it included a Latin character, which is not "part of the national standard for "numbers and symbols" of the People's Republic of China"
VNkQ TIL that medieval royal courts had professional farters that were rewarded with houses and land. The most famous was Roland the Farter in the 12th Century or Pujol, who could shoot water up to 5 feet.
b9wN9 TIL that the town of Winneconne, Wisconsin, after being left off of of the official state road map, attempted to secede from Wisconsin. They wished to either declare independence and annex neighboring towns, or alternatively be integrated into another state, 'preferably one with better weather'.
MeDD7 TIL in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev described Mao Zedong to a Chinese diplomat as an "old boot that needs to be thrown out". 'Old boot' in Chinese meant prostitute, which led Chinese officials to believe Mao had been insulted as an 'old whore' due to misinterpretation.