› added 5 years ago

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TIL about ATLAS-I, aka Trestle, the world's largest structure made entirely of wood, glue laminate, wooden bolts/nuts and sufficient to support a fully loaded B-52 bomber (for elevated EMP testing) 1,000 ft long, 125 ft (about 12 stories) tall, and constructed of 6.5 million board-feet of lumber.

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oRAX7 Today I learned that the green and yellow on the Brazilian flag correspond to a tribute to the royal houses of Portugal and Austria respectively. These colors appeared on the Brazilian Empire flag and remain on the current Brazilian flag.
P1KwE TIL that in 1933, the state of Western Australian voted by a clear majority to secede from the Australian Federation, but at the same time, voted out a pro-seccessionist Premier in favour of the anti-seccession candidate. Efforts to implement secession were ultimately complex and unsuccessful.
mxKWx TIL that Christopher Columbus ordered locals to give him gold and those who didn't got their hands chopped off
KAgJ TIL during the prohibition era, the US government added poison to industrial alcohol to discourage consumption. People continued to drink it, so the government added more and they killed 10,000 people.
Gy6G TIL an experiment sponsored the Quaker Oats corporation fed 73 mentally disabled children radioactive oatmeal in order to track “how nutrients were digested”. The children were told they were joining a science club in exchange for larger portions of food and trips to baseball games.