› added 4 years ago

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TIL between 6,000 & 9,000 years ago, the people of the Levant decorated the skulls of their dead with plaster, gave them shells for eyes, and painted intricate details of hair and moustaches on them. It's not known why.

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rNdVx TIL that the Brennan monorail uses two gyroscopes opposing each other which allows it to balance on a single rail
90w7 TIL that 10 years ago today Spain, a country with 94% Catholic population, passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, becoming just the third country to do so.
JXRl TIL a genetic study of people from Iceland found a number of them had a mutation predominantly found among Native Americans. It has theorised that this could be because of American women breeding with Viking men, during Norse exploration of America in the 11th century AD.
vbDj TIL Gary Webb, an Investigative Reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a series of articles about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking into the US. On December 10, 2004, Gary Webb was found dead in his apartment from two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was later ruled as a suicide.
N75EN TIL that actor Brian Blessed is a fully trained astronaut, having completed over 800 hours of 'space training' in Moscow, and "remains the number one civilian on the wait list for the International Space Station."