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TIL Swedish millionaire Johan Eliasch purchased 400,000 acres of the Amazon Rainforest from a logging company for $14,000,000 for the sole purpose of its preservation.

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dxQQ TIL that one cheap sleeping option for the homeless in London during the depression was sleeping on a clothesline. For twopence one could lean on a rope strung from one wall to another in a hostel. A “valet” would cut the rope at 5 am.
9YJGQ TIL despite the Romans using lead water pipes, lead poisoning from the water supply system was almost nonexistent since the high calcium content in their water created a layer of plaque preventing the water contacting the lead itself.
eOP4 TIL that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) was rejected at first by CBS: they didn’t like that amateur children were doing the voices, they didn’t like the “anti-consumerism” theme of the plot – and they didn’t like the music.
e0dG4 TIL of Joey Deacon, a man with severe cerebral palsy who was introduced to the UK public in 1981 by tv show Blue Peter as part of the Year of the Disabled. His mannerisms started a craze of kids calling each other Joey Deacon when they’d done something stupid that lasted for years.
vPNgx TIL that because of its strategic importance and impregnable position during the Napoleonic Wars, the Diamond Rock, off the coast of Martinique, was considered a warship by the British Admiralty, which conferred on it the title of HMS Diamond Rock, turning the rock into a stone frigate.