› added 2 years ago

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TIL that the French mass media corporation Vivendi was originally founded in 1853 as a water company by an imperial decree from Emperor Napoleon III

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Zpj8D TIL that Gonzaga University is named in honor of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, a 23-year-old Italian Jesuit seminarian who died while attending to the sick who had been forced out of their homes and onto the streets during a plague epidemic in Rome in 1591.
dvEr TIL the real-life home that inspired the movie ‘UP’ is a century-old farmhouse whose owner refused to sell it to developers, even for an inflated price of $1,000,000. Having lived there for over 50 years, she was content to let them build a giant biotech complex all around it.
rRG0M TIL A water dropwort is a highly poisonous plant native to temperate climates. If it kills you, it can cause you to smile after you die. This is called a sardonic grin.
j6Xgj TIL Visual fixation is the ability to maintain your gaze on a single location. It's a short list of the species that we have confirmed have this ability; cats are on it, but dogs aren't.
95kQ TIL it takes two full weeks to make a CPU.