› added 1 year ago

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TIL that the US (22% of the UN budget), China (12.005%), Japan (8.564%) and Germany (6.090%) – together finance some 49% of the entire UN budget.

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via reddit.com

E1Anw TIL a person survived 17 days under the rubble of department store collapse in South Korea that killed 500 people.
p5YN TIL Fred Phelps, founder of the anti-homosexual Westboro Baptist Church, was excommunicated by his own church just before his death for advocating being kinder to members.
neQaY TIL that starting about 7,000 years ago in Egypt, seasonal rains started moving south until rain only now falls regularly on the Ethiopian highlands. This shift forced nomadic cattle herders to settle along the Nile, leading to the first permanent Egyptian civilizations.
05dR TIL the magnitude 9.0 great earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March 2011 “was so powerful that its rumble was ‘heard’ from space. Scientists in France and the Netherlands have found that sound waves from the quake reached as far as an orbiting satellite [GOCE], 260 kilometres [161.6 miles] above.”
VBolD TIL about the Essex, an American whaling ship that was sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. The survivors made for land off the South American coast. Seven crew members were cannibalized before eight survivors were rescued. The tragedy gained international attention, inspiring the novel, Moby Dick.