› added 13 years ago

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TIL A crocodile turned orange after attacking a filter in its enclosure.

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oRjao TIL in 1809, a Danish ex pirate and prisoner of war in England named Jørgen Jørgensen breached his parole, sailed to island, overthrew the Danish count who was the colonial governor in a coup and proclaimed himself ‘His Excellency, the Protector of Iceland.’ His reign lasted for about two weeks
QNxdE TIL binary was inspired by ancient Chinese philosophy, the I-Ching. The same text that provoked Confucius gave Leibniz the insight to develop binary encoding. 64 bits also encapsulates DNA encoding.
YpODG TIL of Heinz Drossel, a German soldier who married the first Jew he rescued in WWII; a woman he stopped from committing suicide. Risking execution, he sheltered her in his apartment before giving her money to find a safer place to stay. Heinz went on to rescue more Jews.
neDRr TIL that William Shatner did a spoken word cover of Golden Earring's Twilight Zone
Lk6Jr TIL a man named Painless Parker created the Parker Dental Circus, a traveling medicine show with his dental chair on a horse-drawn wagon. He charged 50 cents for each extraction and promised that if it hurt, he would pay the patient $5.