› added 6 years ago

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TIL: Swifts can spend up to 10 months in the air without landing. They can eat, sleep, and mate all while flying.

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YpoA7 TIL Kane Tanaka, the oldest person currently alive, was born before the Wright brothers flew. As of today (April 19th), she is the only human ever to exist during the first powered flights on both Earth and Mars.
JYQd8 TIL It's impossible to get an original theatrical cut of Star Wars. Every single release that can be obtained has been altered in some way. Even some of the later theatrical releases in the 70's had changes done to them.
m1mbE TIL In English law priests used to be allowed to commit one murder and face no further consequences beyond having a thumb branded. These benefits of the clergy would be reduced in 1512 and heavily altered by the end of the 1500s.
4MO5 TIL - Europeans didn’t know Marco Polo’s “Cathay” was really China or that the city “Cambulac” was really Beijing, until 1598 when Jesuit priests in Beijing talked to Arab merchants there, who still called it Cambulac. Maps until the 17th century showed China and Cathay as 2 different empires.
dDy8B TIL that the chainsaw was created in the 18th century and was originally designed as a medical device and more precisely (debated) to cut open womens' pelvises for childbirth.