› added 12 years ago

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TIL that hundreds of years ago most people would go to sleep early, wake up for about an hour in middle of night and do various things, and then go back to bed for a ‘second sleep’

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bD5a TIL that chipotle peppers are just smoke-dried jalapeños.
5YeB8 TIL that Wilhelm II, leader of Germany in WW1, sent a telegram to Hitler in 1940 congratulating him on invading the Netherlands, and hoping the German monarchy would be restored. Hitler, upon reading the telegram, said to his valet, "What an idiot!"
Wkj7B TIL the Japanese Shinkansen train network opened in 1964 and consists of 1,717 miles of track with trains reaching 200 MPH or 320 KM/H. Over the Shinkansen’s 50 year history there have been over 5.6 billion riders & not a single death or injury due to accident.
oRmG8 TIL Margaret Thatcher had a habit of marking her territory by swinging her handbag around in meetings, leading to the term "handbagging", a term that made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary
4Xl76 TIL Steven Bradbury won an Olympic Gold Medal in speed skating because all the other competitors fell over