› added 7 years ago

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TIL of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who was a victim of genital mutilation and married off to her cousin. She escaped and sought asylum in the Netherlands, eventually being elected to Dutch parliament. She is now an activist for women’s rights and opposes honor violence and child marriage.

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jKvQ TIL that the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge, expecting to be supplied with sub-par materials, overbuilt the bridge to the point where even when supplied with inferior cabling the bridge remained stronger than it needed to be by a factor of five.
ow5Y TIL on the first day of Lent in the village of Brodilovo, Bulgaria, villagers practice ‘Dog Spinning.’ A dog is suspended above water on a rope. The dog is turned repeatedly in a given direction to wind the rope, then released so that it spins rapidly in the opposite direction as the rope unwinds.
d8Gb9 TIL Roman Emperor Valerian was captured in battle by Persian Emperor Shapur I and what happened after is unknown. Stories include being a slave and footstool, being forced to swallow molten gold, being flayed and his skin taken as a prize, and building Caesar's Dam near Susa before being released.
1bXO TIL that after the iconic dance scene in Pulp Fiction, you see Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace holding a trophy. It’s assumed they won the contest, but later in the film, a barely audible advert states the trophy had, in fact been stolen.
Br7lx TIL that, if nobody was overweight, we could support 111 million more people without increasing energy production