› added 5 months ago

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TIL 1/3 of US ambassadors are untrained in diplomacy, and have simply bought their way into a prestigious post, as big donors.

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Kona TIL during the Japanese Occupation, a Japanese guard told Lee Kuan Yew to join a group of segregated men. Sensing something was wrong, he asked to go home and take his clothes, which the guard agreed. The men were taken the beach and shot. Lee went on to be one of the Founding Fathers of Singapore.
a8Evy TIL that the reason printers refuse to print without yellow ink is because they print a Machine Identification Code on every page, leaving a unique microscopic pattern of yellow dots that say what the serial number and model of the printer is, allowing the documents to be traced back to the owner.
4kAkX TIL- In ww1 planes forward firing gun was synchronized with the propeller to fire through the propeller
E1w6x TIL that when Helium is cooled close to absolute zero, it becomes a superfluid that flows without friction, and behaves in a similar manner to the event horizon of a black hole
1e7P TIL that Polynesian sailors still navigate the oceans using nothing but the stars, the moon, the movement of the waves etc.