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TIL that Kazakhstan was the entire Soviet Union for 4 days

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vPeE7 TIL that the flag of Haiti was created when revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines grabbed a French flag and ripped the white band off. His goddaughter Catherine Flon sewed the blue and red bands back together, creating the first Haitian flag. Flon is widely admired in Haiti today.
e0YeJ TIL: Snails burrow under the leaves and soil and hibernate. Their heart rate slows to where it hardly beats at all, and the snail's blood contains chemicals that prevent it from freezing, similar to many insects and other invertebrates, and even frogs and other animals.
R7da9 TIL that during the cold war, the Soviets fired a machine gun in space. It was a defensive weapon on a secret space-spy-lab and was fired remotely after all personnel departed. The results have not been released.
BgyBW TIL that an American teenager wrote almost half of Scottish Wikipedia using a made up accent and an online translator, and nobody noticed for 7 years
wLW8E TIL John Gavin, who played Samuel Loomis in the 1960 film "Psycho", was unable to reprise his role in "Psycho II" after being appointed U.S. Ambassador to Mexico on June 5, 1981, by President Ronald Reagan. Thus, his character was made a widow of Lila Loomis (played by Vera Miles) in the sequel.