› added 1 year ago

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TIL the city of Los Angeles pays more for parking enforcement/writing tickets than the parking tickets themselves actually generate in revenue for the city.

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via reddit.com

pYOxZ Today I learned of the voiceless labial–velar implosive, the rarest sound to appear in any language. The sound, described as pronouncing a k and p at the same time while sucking in air instead of pushing it out, is found only in the Central dialect of the Igbo language.
neBor TIL that the Brontosaurus was thought to be a mistake, the creature had never existed. The animal was actually an Apatosaurus, a previously discovered dinosaur, and it should have had that name. Now it's been discovered that they actually are two separate animals, and the Brontosaurus exists again.
l7517 TIL France detonated its 1st atomic bomb, the Blue Jerboa, on Feb. 13, 1960 in Saharan Algeria. This was the 1st of 17 nuclear weapons detonations that occurred in the area between 1960 & 1966. The Blue Jerboa was 3 times more powerful than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
dNXr TIL that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union had two missiles pointed at an area they thought was the entrance to a secret bunker, since many high-ranked officials went there. It turns out that the area was a hot dog stand.
RkD7 TIL that Jackie Robinson was not the first baseball player to break the color barrier. Nearly a full year earlier Eddie Klep became the first white man to play in the Negro Leagues.