› added 1 year ago

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TIL that it is estimated that 117 billion people have been born since Modern Homo sapiens first appeared around 200,000 years ago.

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gnrL TIL: KFC use to have a spin-off restaurant called “Kentucky Roast Beef”. (This one was in Bellevue, WA.)
GxOj TIL the only way the BBC could record its live broadcasts in the 1950s was to point a film camera at a television. Because of this, the only known recording of the landmark sci-fi serial “The Quatermass Experiment” features an insect walking across the screen.
1anA7 TIL Russia was forced to release ten pirates who had taken over an oil tanker, due to having insufficient legal grounds to detain them. They released them in an inflatable boat without any navigation equipment. Radio contact was lost within an hour. It’s believed that they all perished.
mxlnx TIL that while the moon’s diameter is 400 times less than that of the sun, it’s also about 400 times closer to earth. That’s why solar eclipses happen to work out so well on earth.
6EnK8 TIL that mapmakers used to plant fictitious streets in their maps, so that if a person copied their map, they could point out the replication of the fake street to prove copyright infringement.