› added 11 years ago

156

TIL Social Security does not contribute to the National Debt

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4XgGo TIL about the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge", an anticyclone high pressure wall which was blocking the North Pacific storm track from getting rain to California over the last roughly 8 years, causing the state's recent record breaking drought. It has finally dissipated and now we get rain again.
nWv99 TIL: The punishment of the dogs was an annual sacrifice of Rome where live dogs were suspended from a cross & paraded. In the same procession, Geese were decorated in gold and purple and carried in honor. Because The Dogs didn't Bark and the Geese honked When the Gauls launched a nocturnal assault.
5bjr TIL 49.2% of the population of Niger is under 15 years of age.
b9V1N TIL a large lunar rock nicknamed Big Bertha, found by Apollo 14 astronauts, is likely a terrestial meteorite. It bears remarkable similarity to zircon found on Earth and dissimilarity to other lunar samples. It is also the third largest lunar rock sample retrieved, measuring at 8.998 kilograms.
AD4bx TIL that in 2003, Ekaterina Dmitrieva married the cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko through a video call while he was in orbit, with a cardboard cutout of him as a proxy. As he hadn't sought permission, weddings in space were banned afterwards, he's therefore the only man in history who married in space.