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TIL that the variant of the word okay - “OK” - is derivative from Martin van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” and was popularised by his rallies for the 1836 US election

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Wkea9 TIL the reason police tap on taillights or run their fingers along the side of a car during a traffic stop is because it left DNA evidence used to identify the vehicle afterwards without pictures or video. Now all patrol cars have cameras but it still occurs since it was part of training for decades
j6MDQ TIL that footage from the video game Arma 3, a military sandbox game, has been mistaken for actual combat footage and has been used in news reports a number of times due to the realistic nature of the game.
ejeg TIL: some people still believe earth is flat, and that earth is a disc encased by antarctica and a 150 foot wall of ice at the edge, guarded by NASA employed security guards.
QNRrd TIL of the RP FLIP, an open ocean research vessel owned by the US Office of Naval Research. It is a one of a kind vessel capable of flipping orientation from horizontal to vertical by filling/emptying an incredibly long water reservoir.
rRawW TIL in Spirited Away, Miyazaki based the river spirit on his own experience of cleaning a polluted river