› added 5 years ago

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TIL 'zavana' was the indigenous name for the plains around Comagre in Panama - it was borrowed into Spanish and then English to describe similar environments, becoming the modern word 'savanna'

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5Ywn TIL several Astronauts, NASA, CIA, FBI, Army, Air Force officials and rocket scientists believe some UFOs are under intelligent control - but not from Earth.
D7ED TIL Aribert Heim, aka Dr. Death because of the horrific experiments he performed on Jews during the Holocaust, evaded capture be escaping Germany and converting to Islam, living in Egypt under the name Tarek Hussein Farid until his death in 1992.
j6onR TIL in 1940, the UK proposed a UK-France merger, so the countries would be seen as a single country for the duration of WW2. This included shared citizenship, resources, defence, and policies. If the proposal was made just a few days earlier, there is belief it would have been carefully considered.
kOX1e TIL West Indies got its name in 1492 because of a confusion. Christopher Columbus sailed west to find India but he landed in the Bahamas and mistook it for India.
EgKJw TIL the @ sign is called "a snail" in Italian, "a puppy" in Armenian, "a little mouse" in Chinese, "a monkey" in Polish, "a duckling" in Greek, "a worm" in Hungarian, "a little dog" in Russian, "a cinnamon roll" in Swedish, "a strudel" in Hebrew and "rollmops" in Czech