› added 10 years ago

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TIL New York City has undercover police cars that look just like yellow cabs, used for everything from catching minor traffic violations to intelligence gathering

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via reddit.com

Z8nKa TIL after the Chinese Civil War, several units of the Nationalist army fled to Burma. When recalled to Taiwan, some refuse and marched into Thailand, where they grew opium while fighting Communists for the government. Their village is now "one of Thailand's top ten destinations among backpackers."
ANMoo TIL the phrase ""if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck" originated from a mechanical duck made in the 18th century that would appear to eat, digest and expel food.
XA1R TIL that footage of Jazz being thrown out of the house on ‘Fresh Prince’ was only filmed once. The actor was to wear the same clothes on episodes he is thrown out to avoid continuity issues.
GYGJQ TIL that there is a temperature scale called the Rankine scale. It uses the absolute zero as it's 0°, but uses the number scale from Fahrenheit. (Compared to Kelvin, which uses the number scale from Celsius)
bgL7 TIL that starting in 1992, a group of activists began publishing Continuum, a magazine that denied the existence of HIV/AIDS. It ceased publication in 2001 after all of its editors died of AIDS-related illnesses.