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TIL - Belgium beat Iraq to get the world record for having no government for the longest time

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via reddit.com

E1np7 TIL that because written Chinese uses characters to represent concepts rather than sounds, speakers of different languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese can communicate through writing, but not speech.
nekEd TIL Pope Clement VII personally approved Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun in 1533, 99 years before Galileo Galilei’s heresy trial for similar ideas.
1aJ48 TIL of King Mithridates of Pontus, who ingested increasing amounts of various poisons in order to prevent his assasination by poisoning. When surrounded by enemy soldiers, he tried to commit suicide by poisoning himself with all of the poisons he had on hand but failed because he was immune.
69Grl TIL that no-one knows what the "H." stands for in "Jesus H. Christ". Some speculate it's "Harold", as in "Harold be thy name".
QJE5L TIL the space shuttle was originally designed to collect Soviet satellites and return them to the USA for reverse engineering