› added 8 years ago

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TIL merchants were traditionally placed at the bottom of the four-tier social class system in feudal Japan because unlike artisans, farmers and fisherman, merchants weren’t considered productive.

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gMY0D TIL that the feeling you get when a storm is coming is really the barometric pressure dropping around you.
BrWBD TIL President Kennedy wanted to go to Mars not the Moon – but engineers told him it was 'a little bit too far'. Nasa told him it would take at least 15 years before we could put a man on the Moon after a weekend of intense calculations
J1DM8 TIL in 1950 some Scottish students stole back the Stone of Scone, a Scottish relic seized by an English king centuries ago. Upon seeing it gone, authorities closed the Scottish border for the first time in 400 years, but once they caught the students, they decided not to prosecute, fearing backlash.
mxbLx TIL use of CT scans has increased dramatically over the last two decades. An estimated 72 million scans were performed in the US in 2007 and more than 80 million a year in 2015. One study estimated that as many as 0.4% of current cancers in the United States are due to CTs performed in the past.
MejPB TIL Clarence Birdseye, inventor of frozen foods, had previously worked as a hunter for the US government. Seeking to find a cure for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Birdseye was assigned to collect small animals and search them for the ticks which transmitted the disease. He found nearly 4,500 ticks.