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TIL: In Vietnam, a bridge over 1,800 feet long has along its length a sculpted yellow metal dragon lit for night display and able to spray water from its mouth --but, most impressively, it can exhale giant fireballs. (It's meant to be a visual tribute to North Vietnam's conquest of Da Nang city.)

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LQ0MQ TIL of a reporter who commissioned a paper from an academic ghostwriting agency to expose the "black market" for college assignments. Instead, the paper got an A-.
D1gkY TIL that in 1981 the Pentagon spent $6 million trying to determine whether or not burning a photograph of a Soviet missile would destroy the actual missile
EgMEV TIL Salmon sperm DNA is used in molecular biology experiments as a standard or template for PCR and as a competitor in hybridisation assays due to its high purity. It can even increase the human DNA recovered from a cotton swab.
xVdPb TIL the British rail service is so ludicrous that one delay was caused because the Train Operator and Network Rail would not agree about the size of a Pheasant that was hit.
8eQbX TIL that Foresters Financial, a company that sells life insurance, originally required prospective members to go through a trial by combat