› added 11 years ago

75

TIL Belgium went 541 days without a government

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

L4DQ TIL Massachusetts passed laws requiring children to be educated by the 1640s and informally required children to be taught to read and write from its founding. Mississippi, on the other hand, was the last state to create compulsory education laws, and didn’t require school attendance until 1918.
4XleR TIL that the Water Boatman insect uses its penis to make a 99.2 decibel mating call, making it, pound for pound, the loudest creature on Earth.
JoL8 TIL Big Ben Clock Towers time is kept accurate by adding or removing pennies on its pendulum changing the clock’s speed by +/- 0.4 seconds per day
pQa8 TIL in Japan there is a family that has run the same hotel for nearly 1,300 years … or 46 generations
OGVX6 TIL there's a town in the Netherlands called Poortugaal. About 10Km south of the center of Rotterdam, the town's flag and coat of arms are also heavily inspired by Portugal's.