› added 11 years ago

183

TIL there is an island in japan that is “ruled by cats”

Read more kotaku.com

via reddit.com

781Xp TIL that recruitment to the British Army's Gurkha unit is extremely competitive, accepting only 230 recruits out of 28,000 applicants. All recruitment happens in Nepalese villages, and candidates must participate in a two-mile race up a steep hill, carrying 35kg of rocks in a basket.
neZV7 TIL the oldest free public library in the English speaking world is Chetham's Library in Manchester, England. It holds more than 100,000 volumes of printed books, of which 60,000 were published before 1851.
kJ9L5 TIL Steve Wozniak dislikes wealth and believes money can corrupt values. In 2017, he said he wanted to avoid it altogether. And unlike Steve Jobs, he gave $10 million in Apple stock to early employees when the company went public.
x6kX5 TIL: Failed supernovae are thought to create stellar black holes by the collapsing of a red supergiant star in the early stages of a supernova. When the star can no longer support itself, the core collapses completely, forming a stellar-mass black hole, and consuming the nascent supernova.
wjrW TIL that about Oberto Airaudi, who secretly dug a cave beneath his unassuming house, extracting 300,000 ft^3 of rock to house 7 intricate temples!