› added 4 years ago

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TIL about the title Nebraska Admiral. The title, which officially grants control of all of the landlocked state's "Navy officers, seamen, tadpoles and goldfish" to its recipients has been awarded to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Queen Elizabeth II. among others.

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b5wE TIL the Amazon Rainforest loses about 22,000 tons of the phosphorus in its soil due to floods every year. The Amazon remains so fertile because the dust of a dried up lake in the Sahara Desert traveling through the atmsophere feeds the Amazon’s plants the phosphorus it lost.
Ya0A TIL that while in the Congo, “James Jameson, heir to an Irish whiskey manufacturer, bought an eleven-year old girl and offered her to cannibals in order to document and sketch how she was cooked and eaten.”
9KkD TIL that one of the world’s lightest solids, aerogel was created as the result of a bet between two scientists to see who could remove the liquid from jellies without shrinkage.
BQ0D TIL in early 2013, banks started sending foreclosure notices without completing the process so that their customers would move out, miss payments, and eventually owe the bank more money while still being legally liable for the property
XNRr TIL if the US used a dollar coin instead of a bill it would save $5.5 billion over 30 years. It mints dollar coins, but unlike other developed countries, won’t remove the bill from circulation, possibly due to lack of support by Federal Reserve.