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TIL on Saturday night (30 March '12), the Chief of the Israeli Navy gave a surprise order for 3 ships to prepare to leave for a 10-day exercise; the men on the ships worked all night only to learn the next morning (1 April '12) that it was all an April Fool's Day joke.

Read more timesofisrael.com

via reddit.com

v15g4 TIL that the EV charging standard "CHAdeMO" is named after the Japanese phrase "O cha demo ikaga desuka," which translates to "How about a cup of tea," alluding that an EV can be charged using the standard in the time it takes to have a cup of tea.
vMLK TIL That although liquid water is not a mineral, it becomes one when it freezes since ice is a naturally occurring, inorganic solid with a definite chemical composition and an ordered internal structure.
NXYRM TIL Pakistan accidentally took down Youtube for the entire globe in 2008 in an attempt to block it
XENZP TIL that in Japan some people celebrate 'mundane Halloween' where they only dress up as people doing everyday, normal things.
ANMKd TIL that it cost NASA more than $50 million to fix a 2-micron deviation in the Hubble's primary mirror to develop COSTAR, which basically acted as "glasses" for the telescope