› added 1 year ago

55

TIL that there is a sea on earth with no land barriers - and it even has its own animals.

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mxv6v TIL that in 1900 a young clerk at a British shipping company observed a fortune in rubber returning from the Congo while only guns and manacles were being sent in return. He correctly deduced that these resources were being extracted from the population by force and campaigned to expose the abuses.
16pLX TIL that the first woman to sail around the globe was French botanist Jeanne Baret. She had to disguise herself as a man, and accompanied her collaborator (and secret lover) Phillibert Commerson on the Bougainville expedition. Together they discovered hundreds of new plants.
XErl8 TIL Sweden has a forest of oak trees planted 200 years ago because their Navy at the time needed them for ships
X0p46 TIL of operation Abscam: an FBI sting operation in the late 70s which resulted in the resignation of 1 US senator and 5 US congressmen and the expulsion of a 6th congressman for corruption. Congress made it impossible for the FBI to run similar sting ops in the future (Civiletti Guidelines, 1981)
VBW5G TIL the small cup with rice cookers measures to 1-gō, the traditional amount used for a serving of rice and a cup of sake in Japanese cuisine.