› added 12 years ago

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TIL that in the 18th century, to discreetly tax rich people more, Scotland, England and France imposed window taxes based on the number of windows your residence had. To this day you can see many bricked over windows from that time.

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WkyLd TIL that the Shriners (known for the Shriners Hospitals) are a body of Freemasons dedicated to Fun, Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth.
nWWAW TIL that only 1 in every 1000 sea turtles born will survive to maturity
e00w4 TIL: In 1983, the rolling stones bassist Bill Wyman began dating a 13 year old girl. He was 47.
DjJV TIL the common banana doesn’t have seeds because it has 3 copies of DNA. An odd number doesn’t split evenly when forming progeny, so the result is a seedless fruit. Seedless watermelon, grapes, etc also have an odd number of copies of DNA.
9wWaD TIL about ternary plots. You can visualise 3 quantities on a 2d triangular graph if they add up to a constant (eg. soil components or colour composition). One graph is “x+y+z=1” which makes a triangle on positive axes, with the regular 3d gridlines intersecting to form triangular ones in the graph.