› added 7 years ago

87

TIL that still today 50% of marriages are arranged worldwide.

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woK0W TIL "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" is an example of an impossible task. The idiom dates at least to 1834, from the Workingman's Advocate: "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots.
dDXY8 TIL that Camilla's great-grandmother Alice Keppel was the mistress of Charles' great-great-grandfather, King Edward VII.
Wkp1d TIL that Steam was originally created so Valve didn't have to keep shutting off Counter-Strike servers to fix issues with the game.
GAR9N TIL That early model M-16s were so prone to jams and malfunctions, mostly due to the failure to ship them with cleaning kits and ammunition which fouled the operating mechanism, that the US military produced a comic book detailing proper field stripping instructions for the weapon.
JY7bQ TIL of ‘Shturmovshchina’—a Russian term for working frantically to meet a deadline after having not done anything for a month.