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TIL the value of a taxi medallion (permit allowing a taxicab to operate) in New York City peaked in 2013 at over $1 million. By 2019, medallions were being sold for as low as $136,000. Since many cab drivers took out loans to buy when values were high, many have been forced to declare bankruptcy.

Jb0l TIL: That, contrary to the popular American belief that British people have bad teeth, British people’s teeth are infact much better on average with the average number of missing or decayed teeth at age 12 being just under half that of America’s.
kOgRe TIL that the term Freelancer, commonly used for a person who is self-employed or not committed to a particular employer, was originally use to describe a medieval mercenary knight (ie a knight who's lance was not sworn to any lord's services).
e0Ay5 TIL: The reason we say "o clock" is from the period when mechanical clocks and their sundial predecessors overlapped. To clarify which type of time you were giving you'd say, for example, "10 on the clock" which became "10 o' clock"
BroGx TIL there's been proposals to terraform Venus for a human colony since the 1960's, such as thinning the dense atmosphere to reduce the 450 °C surface temperature, setting up a system of orbital mirrors to give it Earth-like day/night cycle, and colliding it with an ice moon to fill it with water.
VMe8B TIL the neolithic cave of Scaloria has a basin carved into the bedrock, with pottery placed on top of the stalagmites surrounding it. 70 pots were recovered, some still sitting in place after 7,000 years. The whole scene is looked over by a lone skull.