› added 8 months ago

109

TIL: Banks in Finland stopped issuing cheques in 1993, The Netherlands in 2002 and Denmark in 2017.

Read more denverpost.com

via reddit.com

JbY4 TIL black pepper is actually a fruit
gM5Pb TIL about the 1898 Siege of Baler. During the Philippine revolution a 50 soldiers detachment of the Spanish 2nd Expeditionary Battalion Cazadores managed to survive 337 days in a fortified church, while killing 700 Filipino Revolutionaries and suffering only 17 casualties mostly due to disease.
bX1E TIL The Ebola virus wiped out 70 to 95% of the 20,000 gorillas in Congo’s d'Odzala national park between 2003 and 2005
9YXXQ TIL that during peak growing season for the Midwest US corn belt, the region undergoes more photosynthesis activity than anywhere else on the planet-- with levels up to 40% greater than observed in the Amazon.
4kRvR TIL In 1988 Ivan McGuire, an experienced skydiver with 800 recorded dives jumped from the plane for his 3rd dive that day. He had his camera rig with him but completely forgot to equip a parachute rig, thus he jumped to his death from 10.000 feet. The camera footage of the fatal fall survived