› added 9 months ago

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TIL the "Pauli effect" is the supposed tendency of technical equipment to mysteriously break in the presence of certain people. The effect is named after Austrian theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, whose presence was associated with spontaneous mechanical failure throughout his career.

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XErl8 TIL Sweden has a forest of oak trees planted 200 years ago because their Navy at the time needed them for ships
16ROW TIL That 4 months before the Rwandan genocide happened General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces warned the UN that a genocide could happen but they ignored him
B5lb TIL A map making company in the 1930s placed a made up an hamlet (village) in their maps as a copyright trap. Years later the village started showing up on Rand McNally maps. The originator of the map sued for copyright infringement, but in fact locals and government had adopted and used the name.
jNrXE TIL of Wichard von Alvensleben, a German Wehrmacht Officer who, in 1945, commanded his soldiers to protect 140 Allied POWs from being executed by the SS. The POWs were then set free.
M7xmK TIL about Tommy Manville, the heir to the Johns-Manville fortune. The terms of his family trust granted him $250,000 "when he married." As a result he got married 13 times, giving the women a cut of the proceeds before quickly divorcing them.