› added 6 years ago

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TIL that "twitchers" are committed bird-watchers who travel long distances to see new species. They have their own jargon, including "nemesis" for a bird that has eluded them despite multiple attempts to see it, and "plastic" for a bird that escaped from captivity rather than being genuinely wild.

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Br0Vx TIL Indiana was the last state to allow Coors to be sold owing to exclusive distributorship rules.
LkA4m TIL that in 2013 a novel bat coronavirus was found in a Yunnan cave bat which, unusually, could affect humans; it was extremely similar to the current COVID-19.
RaL1 TIL that the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Roman Empire.
VM1jG TIL Iceland's median wealth per adult is 445k (in USD), nearly twice the value for the next highest country
RQE7 TIL that in the 1960’s, for fear of having their submarine communication cables cut by the Soviets, the US military sent 480,000,000 copper needles into space to secure their communications infrastructure. The needles acted as a mirror for radio waves, enabling communication between distant sites.