› added 8 years ago

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TIL that Finland once accidentally built a lighthouse on the Swedish side of their border. Instead of simply transferring the lighthouse to the Swedes, the two countries redrew the border, so that the lighthouse ended up on Finnish soil.

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via ift.tt

M71ZB TIL that in 1957, Congress voted to de-authorize Fossil Cycad National Monument in South Dakota because the site became devoid of fossils due to pillaging and they were no longer able to justify it's existence as a unit of the NPS.
pYAaN TIL: According to a 2016 study, having a first-class section on an airplane quadruples the chances of an air rage incident. Furthermore, loading economy passengers through first class doubles the chances again.
0krp TIL during the Holocaust one Jewish woman exposed between 600 and 3000 hiding Jews to the Gestapo to prevent her family from being sent to a concentration camp. Even after the Nazis sent her parents and husband to Auschwitz anyway in 1943, she continued to work for the Gestapo until 1945
J1n9v TIL The Mosuo (a Chinese ethnic group) believe that long ago, dogs had life spans of 60 years and humans had life spans of 13 years, and humans traded their life span with the dogs in exchange for honouring them. During the adulthood initiation rites, adolescents pray before the family dogs
9YeVm TIL Beneath the streets of Cincinnati OH is the largest abandoned subway tunnel system in the US. Construction began in the 1910s but was halted by WWI and then canceled indefinitely during the Great Depression.