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TIL: 54% of Americans read under a 6th grade level

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R7E94 TIL that the crime that led Sisyphus to push a boulder was cheating death. He made his wife not bury him properly before he died, chained death, and tricked Persephone into letting him briefly return to earth to scold his wife and ran away instead of returning to hell.
W7JaY TIL only 16 out of 54 African countries have been visited by a sitting US president.
X6v6 TIL in Nara prefecture, Japan, deers and people lived in harmony for 1300 years. You can see deers all over the city. They are called “bowing deers” because they bow to people to get food.
X0A9X TIL that chimney swifts breed in North America, but their wintering location was unknown in 1944. It was discovered when an indigenous Peruvian was seen wearing a necklace made out of the bands scientists had tied to the birds’ legs to track them.
9yaX TIL in 1976, Japan donated 53 bonsai trees to the US for its bicentennial, including a white pine that had been tended daily since 1625 and survived the Hiroshima atomic blast. Its history was unknown until 2001, when two brothers showed up at the museum to check on their grandfather’s tree.