› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the Bermuda Land Snail was thought to have gone extinct in the 70s. In 2014, many were rediscovered in a Hamilton city alleyway. The snails had colonized the alley early on and the surrounding city shielded them from the threats that wiped out the rest of the species.

0wkAA TIL that the United States Congress has not issued a formal declaration of war since June of 1942 (against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania). And the USA has never "lost" such a Congressionally-declared war.
lJRB TIL while Australian billionaire Kerry Packer was playing poker in a Vegas casino, a Texas oil investor kept bragging about how rich he was, when he said he was worth $60 Million, Kerry Packer took a coin out of his pocket and said “I’ll flip you for it”.
OoBmX NASA put 12 astronauts on the moon between 1969 and 1972. With the death Friday of Apollo 16’s John Young, only five of those astronauts are still alive, and they range in age from 82 to 87. No human being has been beyond low Earth orbit since the end of the Apollo program.
DLOJ TIL that in WWI even though the officers knew that at 11 am there was a cease fire areement, they kept on sending troops into no-mans land and shelling the enemy lines, right up to 10:59 am. About 2,000 people died with only hours left of fighting.
7rJ0b TIL until December '98, songs could not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 unless they were released as a single. This resulted in many well-known 90s songs (e.g. No Doubt's Don't Speak, Sugar Ray's Fly) being absent from the chart's history. Under current rules, they would have likely hit #1.