› added 10 years ago

863

TIL that California’s official state animal is extinct.

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v1Em4 TIL Hans van Meegeren is a master forger known as a national hero in the Netherlands for selling his fake art to Nazis during WW2. After the war, people believed the paintings were real, and he was charged as a collaborator. To prove his innocence, he painted a new forgery at his trial. It worked.
Zp81p TIL Leo Marks, WWII cryptographer, discovered that Dutch intelligence was compromised when coded messages came through with zero typos or grammar errors. The grammar Nazis were, in fact, actual Nazis.
9YMPp TIL: Over the next 20 years, a new pilot will need to be trained and ready to fly a commercial airliner every 15 minutes in order to meet demand.
Wkp8Y TIL that 80% of toilets in Hong Kong are flushed with seawater in order to conserve the city's scarce freshwater resources
rRO4d TIL that there has been a surge in suicide rates among middle-age men since the 2000's, thought to be because of increased cases of loneliness and social isolation.