› added 6 years ago

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TIL that former Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg once went incognito as a taxi-driver in Oslo because he wanted to "hear from real Norwegian voters and that taxis were one of the few places where people shared their true views."

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

yVAyX TIL that Aztecs had 18 festivities each year, 17 of which included human sacrifices. Apart from extraction of the heart, they used variety of other methods; drowning, starvation, decapitation, burning, bludgeoning, throwing from heights, forced gladiatorial combat and shooting with arrows.
YjrG TIL that Russian cosmonauts used to carry a handheld, triple barreled shotgun with a fold out machete into space to fight off bears and wolves when they landed.
xVkjg TIL that the fighting was so intense that 4% of the sand on Normandy beach is made up of shrapnel from D-Day that has broken down
v1JDD TIL that "Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America" from Parks and Recreation is an actual book, with Leslie Knope accredited as the author. The book features the fictional history of Pawnee, along with blurbs from the various citizens of the town.
N7Rk6 TIL that in 1859 a 2 hour telegraph conversation between Portland and Boston was able to be had without the use of any battery power. This was due to an aurora borealis generating enough electric current in the telegraph wires.