› added 8 months ago

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TIL that Alcatraz Island is a federally protected bird sanctuary for various sea birds, including the Western Gull, Brandt's Cormorant, and Black-Crowned Night Heron. These birds nest on the island between April and June.

Read more nps.gov

via reddit.com

69bo7 TIL the art of surfing was first brought to California by Hawaiian prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole and his brothers, who taught Santa Cruz locals how to surf in 1885. He later brought surfing to England in 1890.
N7dre TIL a Greyhound became a Saint in 13th Century France
5Vbk TIL that Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine/The Emperor) was only 39 when he played The Emperor in “Return of the Jedi”
djLB TIL of Kowloon Walled City – a bygone, ungoverned Chinese city with a population density of over 3 million people per square mile
0XM5 TIL Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi were enemies. Churchill favored letting Gandhi die if he went on a hunger strike, and during the Bengal famine of 1943 responded to urgent requests to divert food supplies to India with a telegram asking, if food was so scarce, “why Gandhi hadn’t died yet”.