› added 4 years ago

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TIL that Taiwan has a territorial claim in the Spratly islands, called Taiping Island, also known as Itu Aba.

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yQ07e TIL When Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania for the Battle of Gettysburg, his army kidnapped free black civilians and sold them south into slavery.
e09yE TIL trees are mostly made from the air, not the ground. They take carbon dioxide, use photosynthesis to split carbon off to make most of their mass, and "exhale" the oxygen.
mxv4y TIL that the recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) have these things in common: 1) the victims are chronic alcoholics; 2) they are usually elderly females 3) the body has not burned spontaneously, but some lighted substance has come into contact with it.
OoYLL TIL when ‘The Shining’ premiered, the MPAA wouldn’t allow blood to appear in any trailer “approved for all audiences,” but Stanley Kubrick managed to get a trailer comprised solely of the elevator scene passed by convincing the board the tsunami of blood was rusty water.
yQYgJ TIL that ignorance breeding overconfidence is a scientifically observed phenomenon called the “Dunning–Kruger effect“