› added 12 years ago

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TIL that a commercial 1989 laptop had a multitasking graphical OS and full office suite, SSD storage and a 60 hour battery life as well as featuring hot-swappable batteries and instant suspend/resume.

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4XKoJ TIL in 1918 World War 1 censors minimized early reports of the flu epidemic's death toll to maintain wartime morale. Newspapers in neutral Spain were free to report on the epidemic's effects, creating a false impression that Spain was the hardest hit, and giving rise to the name "Spanish flu".
e0A9g Men should favour weight lifting and running over cycling in order to preserve their bones, scientists have said after a study suggested brittle bone disorders are more common than previously thought.
Lkg0P TIL that during the Winter War, the Soviet Union bombed Finland, afterwards claiming they were dropping food to the "starving people of Helsinki" - the Finnish dubbed the bombs "Molotov bread baskets", and in return, called their own firebombs "Molotov cocktails", as "a drink to go with the food."
nWmyW TIL Roman toilets were life-threatening. Creatures would come up and bite, wiping was done with a shared stick with a sponge (never cleaned) and there was so much methane that the toilets exploded. So many people died, they tried to use magic spells to keep demons away. (NSFW)?
O5m4 TIL The ceremony of the keys at the Tower of London has gone on almost uninterrupted for 700 years. It was late once during WWII due to a number of bombs hitting the guard room, knocking the guards and Yeoman warder over. The officer in charge personally wrote a letter to the king to apologise.