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TIL about Yuval Noah Harari's philosophy of fiction. He argues that human beings are able to cooperate in large numbers due to their capacity to believe in things that exist purely in imagination like gods, nation, money and human rights.

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5YQpR TIL Wu Tang Clan member Gza is a science nerd and has spoken at Harvard and hosted a Physics lecture at MIT
npW TIL that AT&T has a database known as “Hawkeye” that contains 312 terabytes of data detailing nearly every telephone communication on AT&T’s domestic network since 2001
NMRb TIL the Taj Mahal was covered with a huge scaffold during WW2 to make it look like a stockpile of Bamboo and misguide any enemy bombers. (It was also disguised again in 1971!)
xVkDg TIL: The shortest war in history was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar in 1896 and lasted 38 to 45 minutes. At 09.02 British ships started a bombardment of the sultan's palace which ended at 09.40. 500 Zanzibaris were killed, but only one British sailor was injured.
OELY TIL Haiti and Lichtenstein had the same exact flag. The two countries were not aware of the similar design until they encountered each other at the 1936 Olympics.