› added 13 years ago

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TIL John Harrison, the official taste-tester for Dreyer’s Ice Cream, insured his tongue for 1,000,000.

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WklgN TIL that in 2015, the city of Toronto took too long to pick a dead raccoon off the sidewalk so Torontoans made a memorial to it.
BrD1r TIL that there is more water in the vapor and clouds above the Amazon rainforest than there is in the Amazon river
8ka TIL there is an international treaty called the Convention on the Rights of the Child which says all children are born with fundamental rights and freedoms equal to that of all human beings. Only two governments have not signed: The United States and Somalia.
R519 TIL in Japan, it is so common for people to die alone undiscovered for long periods, that they have a term for it, “Kodokushi”. “Their bodies lie in places undiscovered for long periods of time, and because of this, thick, dark stains shaped like a human body are left where their bodies once lay.”
781PX TIL that George Orwell was spied on by a Soviet secret agent named Hugh O'Donnell, code-name O'Brien. In a coincidence, (book spoiler) Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four to have a spy named O'Brien betray the main character, without knowing about the Soviet spy codenamed "O'Brien."