› added 7 years ago

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TIL in the 1880s, many farmers communicated by connecting their phones to barbed wire fences. This process often allowed for up to 20 people to be connected at once, everyone’s phone would ring regardless of who called, and the invention helped many farmers overcome depression and loneliness.

1vn7 TIL a 120-meter-deep, 17th-Century salt mine in Romania has been converted to the world’s largest salt mining museum and amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel, an amphitheater, light shows on the rock walls and boat rides on a subterranean lake.
V6Bm TIL: North Korea claims to have sunk the heavy cruiser USS Baltimore and even preserved the ship that “sunk it” in a museum. The USS Baltimore was never deployed to Korea and was scrapped in 1972.
m7xo Mercedes protect your eardrums in a crash by emitting a loud static noise just prior to impact, which triggers your ears to protect themselves. Also - your ears are able to protect themselves from loud noises
6E4YQ TIL about Paricutin, a 1,400 foot volcano that formed over the course of a 9 year eruption from 1942-1951. Before the volcano formed, the land was flat farmland, and just before formation there were hundreds of earthquakes and farmers reported hearing thunder even though the skies were clear.
a8nlL TIL that during "the Emergency", a political crisis in India which saw civil liberties being curtailed, the newspaper Indian Express protested against ongoing press censorship by publishing a fully blank front page editorial.