› added 4 years ago

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TIL the U.S. Government had a top-secret WWII weapon that just made Germans smell like shit, but cancelled it because the person who sprayed it would also end up smelling like shit.

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Z89BQ TIL the Queen owns all of the U.K.'s swans. Every year there is an annual census of all the swans in the River Thames, a centuries-old tradition known as the Swan Upping that takes place the third week in July. This years Swan Upping started today.
QBG9 TIL firing squads issue a blank cartridge to either all-but-one, or one-but-not-all, of the members. No member of the squad is told beforehand if he is using live ammunition. This is called the “conscience round” which allows each member to believe they did not personally fire the fatal shot.
04Qj TIL the sun is brighter than about 90% of the stars in the galaxy
Y4Gv TIL that the Hoover Dam can not generate electricity if the elevation of Lake Mead’s water level drops below 320m. In 2016, it reached 326m, down from a high of 370 in the 1980s.
WkkRN TIL: Ben Franklin wrote about Native American Indians, captured and raised from a young age by colonists, would return to their tribes after a single conversation with them. And that whites captured and raised within American Indian culture would flee the colonists the first chance they got.