› added 7 years ago

490

TIL the Elephant Man had to sleep sitting up. One night he tried to sleep lying down, to be 'like other people', and he died from a dislocated neck.

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k01B TIL many phrases in English come from literal translations of Chinese phrases, such as “long time no see”, “no go”, “lose face” and “no can do”
XEJgj TIL Dubai is not actually dependent on oil revenue. They used their relatively limited reserves, found in 1966, to build infrastructure throughout the 70's and then transitioned their economy to real estate and construction (22.6%), trade (16%), ports (15%) and financial services (11%).
DQ45p TIL that in 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright wrote and published a 50,000 word novel, 'Gadsby' which does not contain the letter 'e' . A warehouse containing most copies of the book burned down.
pY8JQ TIL that modern diesel trains can move a ton of freight 492 miles on a single gallon of gas.
KjZR TIL That the U.S. prison population is about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners even though the country itself holds only 5 percent of the world’s population.