› added 11 years ago

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TIL that belief in elves is so widespread in Iceland that in in 1982, 150 Icelanders went to the NATO base in Keflavík to look for elves who might be endangered by American Phantom jets and AWACS reconnaissance planes.

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0wjdy TIL the first ever Kentucky Derby (1875) was won by Oliver Lewis, a 19 y/o black man.
yQDwM TIL of the Saro Lerwick, a WWII RAF flying boat with a very poor loss rate. Of the 21 built, 10 were lost to accidents, and an 11th, on patrol in good weather, just disappeared
PAxL TIL that Australia’s quarantine laws during the 1956 olympics were so strict that they prevented equestrian events from occurring. The equestrian events were simultaneously held in Stockholm making 1956 the only instance of split site olympics.
mxpXM TIL that during the Great Leap Forward, when Chinese sparrows were deemed a pest and tried to be exterminated, some of the sparrows found refuge at the Polish Embassy in Beijing. The Embassy refused to scare away the birds and was surrounded by people playing on drums causing the sparrows to die.
8aNKK TIL the oldest continuously ongoing company in the world is a construction company in Japan specializing in Buddhist temples. Established in 578 CE, it is as old as the time when Buddhism was introduced into Japan in 538 CE. In 2007, after 1,429 years in business, it ran out of money.