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TIL that the GPS service used globally is paid for by the U.S. Department of Defense, and costs upwards of a billion dollars annually.

Read more gps.gov

via reddit.com

vPKwj TIL of the "jury of matrons". In English law, a female plaintiff or defendant at trial who claimed to be pregnant was allowed to call a jury of older women to inspect her and decide if she truly was pregnant.
xVKm5 TIL two students in a school performance of Sweeney Todd had their throats cut because the school supplied an actual straight razor for the throat slitting scene.
VMRND TIL Since female dairy cows are much more valuable than bulls we use machines to sort bull semen into male vs female semen. These machines work based on the fact that XX semen have more DNA than XY, and thus greater mass, and can be automatically discriminated when colored with florescence.
J1gDv TIL that Gresham College, an institution of higher learning in London, does not enroll students or award degrees, and instead hosts over 140 free public lectures every year. Since 2001, all lectures have been made available online.
d8JPK TIL a large portion of legacy carrier airlines in the US outsource their flights to regional ones - for example, in 2011 61% of American, United and Delta flights were handled by regional airlines.