› added 5 years ago

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TIL that during WW2, Bicycle (card company) smuggled escape maps in their card decks to help allied POWS escape from German POW camps. To reveal the map, a card was soaked in water as to separate the two paper layers that make up the cards. The map was on the insides of the card.

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via reddit.com

9wvDB TIL of the single tax movement (aka geoism or georgism), an economic ideology where that the government should be funded by a tax on land rent rather than taxes on labor
EgGWX TIL a giant island called “Forty Acre Bog” in Lake Chippewa has to be pushed by boats away from a bridge almost every year
5Mln TIL of the Rosenhan experiment: Sane people faked hearing voices to see if they would be accurately diagnosed. They weren’t. None of the subjects were identified as impostors by the hospital staff, though psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors.
ANMZB TIL that before he wrote The Music Man in 1957, Meredith Willson wrote It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas for Perry Como six years prior
vPOPD TIL that the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has no sewage system - so trucks have to pump out poo every day