› added 6 years ago

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TIL Blackcurrant cultivation was banned in the U.S. from the early 1900s until 2003. Less than 1% of Americans have tasted one.

KYVbQ TIL that on April 21st, 2016, the CN Tower and Niagara Falls were both bathed in purple light to commemorate the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. Many bystanders mistakenly believed this to have been a tribute to the legendary musician Prince, who died of a fentanyl overdose that very same day.
Wjr8 TIL there’s a Japan indoor vegetable-factory that produces 10,000 heads of lettuce a day while using just 1% of the amount of water needed for outdoor fields. LEDs emit light at ideal wavelengths for plant growth, while also optimizing night and day cycles, allowing lettuce to grow 2.5 times faster.
GAGM7 TIL of Thomas Higgins, the first person to be posthumously elected as a UK Member of Parliament. He died from a heart attack on election night, after polling had closed, but before the result had been declared.
VMkm4 TIL that Nobuo Fujita, the Japanese pilot who attacked a town in Oregon during World War II returned years later to present his family's 400-year-old samurai sword to the city as a symbol of regret
kOQaB TIL that in 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.”