› added 8 years ago

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TIL that neanderthals didn’t rely on lightning strikes to make fire, instead, they used chemistry, by putting manganese dioxide on wood to lower the temperature required to create a flame.

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9MYr TIL outing CIA agents wasn’t made illegal until 1982 after a former agent published several bestsellers which named thousands of CIA personnel
0wEOL TIL the expression "Oh the humanity!!" is a quote from the news reporter Herbert Morrison while describing the Hindenburg disaster in real time.
dDR0E TIL that in Thomas More's 1516 book "Utopia" (the origin of the word), there are no lawyers in the ideal society
lobv5 TIL that Despite its name, no part of Equatorial Guinea's territory lies on the equator— it is in the northern hemisphere, except for the insular Annobón Province, which is about 155 km (96 mi) south of the equator.
gey7 TIL there is no “Nobel Prize” for Economics - it is a separate prize created 67 years later, which Alfred Nobel’s descendants have called “a PR coup by economists to enhance the prestige of free market ideology and establish it as a science.”