› added 6 years ago

86

TIL the groundhog and woodchuck are the same animal.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

WkZB8 TIL The next Mars Close Approach is Oct. 6, 2020, when the Red Planet will be only 38.6 million miles from Earth. Mars Close Approach happens about every 26 months
KODKG TIL that a man with a personalized license plate which read "NO PLATE" received 2500 overdue traffic tickets... because they had all been issued to various cars with no plates, and when a car marked "NO PLATE" appeared in the system, the algorithm automatically redirected those tickets to its owner.
6XEZ TIL Adolf Hitler wrote admiringly of the Chinese and Japanese. “They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud [of ours].”
yVPga TIL about the Barnes Opening, considered one of the worst chess openings and deemed as having almost no strategic advantages and a lot of drawbacks.
1anPd TIL 800 years before the Black Death, the same bacteria cause plague in the Byzantine Empire. At it's peak, the plague killed 5,000 per day in Constantinople.