› added 6 years ago

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TIL that in 1917 you could order a belt-fed machine gun from a Sears catalog: "Machine guns are used largely by police organizations, home guards and municipalities in case of riots."

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e0xWE TIL Wine Glasses Are Seven Times Larger Than They Were In The 1700s
XE6ME TIL steel doesn't need to melt to lose it's strength. At 50% of the melting temperature it already loses 90% structural integrity.
6WZQ TIL that the Dali Lama is not in fact a vegetarian, but a meat eater.
E1WGW TIL that for 5000 years, Europeans built huge magnificent cities, and lived in them, just to burn them to the ground every 75 years. People in current-day Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the area, intentionally set their settlements on fire between 7000-2000 BC, for reasons still being researched.
gMLM4 TIL that Singapore still use caning extensively as a form of punishment in schools, prisons and the government.