› added 7 years ago

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TIL in the late 1800s Australian surveyors had realised the two tallest mountains, Mt. Kosciuszko and Mt. Townsend, were mismeasured, and in fact Mt. Townsend was taller. Instead of rewriting many textbooks the NSW government decided to switch the two names, leaving us with what we have today.

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vPZK7 TIL: Maryland was a slave state that sided with the Union, but in 1864, they actually had a referendum to abolish slavery. It narrowly failed - until the absentee ballots from the soldiers at the front came in, at which point it overwhelmingly succeeded.
KOV54 TIL If you weighed 100 pounds at the north pole on a spring scale, at the equator you would weigh 99.65 pounds, or 5.5 ounces less. Your mass, in grams, would stay the same because 'grams' is a measure of the resistance of a body to being moved and has nothing to do with acceleration or gravity.
7rY67 Today I learned that a 13 year old spotted an incorrect prop in the Al Capone museum exhibit because he casually knows the production timeline of antique radios.
ANWRo TIL Marquis De Lafayette was a Frenchman who volunteered to join the American Revolution and the 19 y/o met 45 y/o George Washington.He then went back to France and the 42 y/o fought against the rise of 30 y/o Napoleon Bonaparte. The 62 y/o also may have briefly interacted with 17 y/o Robert E Lee
g10b TIL: An 80s pop song has been online since 2002 (YouTube since 2007) that no one has been able to identify despite extensive research.