› added 12 years ago

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TIL that in 2006, all outdoor advertisements were banned in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Within a year, 15000 billboards were taken down in South America’s largest city.

W7aW4 TIL that King George III’s Golden Jubilee - Britain’s first - held on 25th October 1809, saw whole oxen roasted in Windsor, fireworks at Frogmore, and debtors freed from prison. Babies were named “Jubilee George”, candles sold out, and monuments were raised across the country."
ANJmx TIL Belgian scientist Georges Lemaître died on 20 June 1966, shortly after having learned of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, which provided further evidence for his proposal about the birth of the universe, the "Big Bang Theory"
6E59W TIL that the International Morse code distress signal <SOS> does not stand for anything. It was adopted due to being easy to remember and broadcast even for people unfamiliar with Morse code, being a continuous sequence of three dots, three dashses, and three dots, with no spaces.
5Xv8 TIL people of the Mongol empire NEVER washed their clothes or themselves because they believed washing would pollute the water and anger the dragons that controlled the water cycle.
l7DLA TIL in the 1950s Coca-Cola wanted to raise the price of a Coke above 5¢, but their vending machines only took single coins. Not wanting to double it to 10¢, Coke asked the US to mint a 7.5¢ coin, but were denied. So it made every 9th bottle in the machines empty, making the avg effective price 5.6¢.