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TIL sociologist David Dunning once wrote: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is." He described this phenomenon as the "the anosognosia of everyday life."

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BgJ0d TIL that in 1937, seven North American beavers were released in Finland as an effort to boost the population of the Eurasian beaver (nearly hunted to extinction) before it was known that they were actually two distinct species. Today, approximately 12,000 North American beavers live in Finland.
ne74W TIL In 2005 a cardboard box was added to the US National Toy Hall of Fame : "Inside a big cardboard box, a child is transported to a world of his or her own, one where anything is possible."
nWvoY TIL that the richest person in the world is France's Bernard Arnault (with a net worth of $214.4 billion), and that he got his start in the luxury goods industry when he bought Christian Dior in 1985 for $15 million, using money from his father’s successful construction business.
v1pOB TIL: The 1997 Albanian Civil War was precipitated by an economic crisis caused by the collapse of several enormous pyramid schemes which over 2/3 of the country's population had invested in.
vj88 TIL there was a traffic jam so bad that it lasted for 10 days with some people being stuck for up to 5 days. It was so bad a mini economy formed along the road to provide services to the stuck drivers.