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TIL that Burma had an economic crisis in the late 80s because the president decided to cancel any currency that wasn’t divisible by 9 (his favorite number)

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K4eR TIL there are thousands of US cities with worse lead contamination levels than Flint, MI.
OZva TIL knife manufacturer, Victorinox, claims never to have had to lay off an employee. To avoid this they set aside profits during boom periods to supplement recessionary periods, as well as temporarily contracting employees to other companies as outsourced labour during recessions.
LkgGP TIL that East Germany invested the machinery, housing, farm training, and infrastructure necessary to increase the coffee production in Vietnam, in exchange for 50% of the Vietnamese coffee harvest for 20 years. The first usable harvest occurred in 1990, one year after the Berlin Wall fell.
xrKw TIL that the 1950 toy lab set “Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory” contained uranium ore, polonium, a Geiger counter and a cloud chamber.
oYYr TIL the most successful interrogator of WWII preferred friendliness to torture. The U.S. military later incorporated his methods into its curriculum at its interrogation schools. Many of Scharff’s methods are still taught in US Army interrogation schools.