› added 4 years ago

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TIL that Tug of War (not a masturbatory reference) was once an Olympic Sport. It was dropped after the Antwerp games in 1920 after a number of controversies.

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via reddit.com

EyvX TIL scientists once tested the intelligence of beavers by playing the sound of running water on dry land. Eventually, the beavers started to cover the tape recorder with mud and branches.
Oonbg TIL the Netherlands and the british Isles of Scilly were technically at war with each other for 335 years with neither side realizing it. When peace was signed in 1986, the Dutch ambassador joked that it must have been harrowing to the Scillonians "to know we could have attacked at any moment."
xYLB TIL that a Spanish woman claimed ownership of the Sun in 2010, using a loophole in the Space Treaty of 1967. Spanish courts validated her claim and she proceeded to charge companies that use solar energy. In 2015 she sued ebay after her account was blocked for selling plots of land on the Sun.
ENBd TIL that the instruction manual for the WW2 Tiger tank was written in poetry, and features ‘a woman who frequently found herself without any clothes with cartoon Tiger crewmen’
69L5W Til about Rick Rescorla who after saving 2700 people on 9/11 went back up to look for stragglers & who the book and movie “ “We were soldiers “ is based on