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TIL since India has more than 400 million vegetarians, every packaged food or toothpaste in India must have a mark to distinguish whether it is vegetarian or non-vegetarian. The vegetarian symbol is a green square with a green dot in the centre while the non vegetarian is the same in red.

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8GM8 TIL the Manchineel tree, native to Florida, considered the most poisonous tree in the world, causes painful blisters if you stand under it during rain, blinds you if smoke from its burned wood touches your eyes, can poison water with its leaves and will cause death if you eat its fruits.
9MrD TIL that the distorted words in CAPTCHAs (the anti-spam feature) are all taken from old books and newspapers. By identifying the words, users are actually helping to transcribe these printed sources to the internet. As a result, the entire New York Times archive is now searchable back to 1850.
JYb8m TIL the first thanks giving in America was not celebrated in Plymouth Massachussets, but in Berkeley Hundred, Virginia
Znvp TIL when congress asked physicist R.R. Wilson to justify the US government spending millions of dollars on a new particle accelerator (Fermilab), Wilson testified that the knowledge gained from it would have “nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.”
wXLP TIL that Porsche produced the first hybrid vehicle in 1901. It was a series hybrid using wheel hub motors mounted in each wheel, and powered by electricity delivered from both batteries and a small generator.