› added 3 weeks ago

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TIL An African American Musician, Wary of Racism, Pretended to Be Indian, And Received Nationwide Fame. He Maintained This False Identity For The Rest Of His Life.

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69P1w TIL that Promethium is an extremely rare metal, with only about 500–600 grams naturally occurring in the earth’s crust
wDJ8 TIL British PM Gordon Brown hand-wrote a letter of condolence to a mother whose son had died in Afghanistan where he misspelled the deceased’s surname. The Sun published a vitriolic article criticising his lack of care but misspelled the same name and was forced to publish an apology of its own
OGLXg Today I learned that in 1962 a man bought a deserted island in the Seychelles and planted 16000 trees, reintroduced 120 giant turtles and hundreds of birds turning the island into a protected national park
d8EJ9 TIL that several of the peoples of the eastern New Guinea Highlands have developed an "avoidance language", used when collecting pandanus nuts in order to not use words that are thought of as being "unhealthy" for the plants.
E1pKw TIL a Japanese zoo unsuccessfully tried to mate a pair of hyenas for four years before realizing both were males.