› added 6 years ago

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TIL of Dashrath Manjhi, an Indian man who manually carved a path 110 m long, 9.1 m wide and 7.6 m deep through a hill using only a hammer and chisel over the course of 22 years, shortening travel from his village, Gehlaur, to the town of Gaya from 55km to 15km.

1aebr TIL Steve Jobs was already trying to develop the iPad in 1983, saying what they want to do is "put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes" and that he hoped to sell it for under $1,000 within the decade.
epaag TIL that Barry Manilow didn't write his huge 1977 hit "I Write the Songs". It was actually a cover of a song first recorded by The Captain and Tenille, written by Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys.
RmD8 TIL: Joseph Stalin in 1944 encouraged Polish resistance fighters in Warsaw to rebel against their German occupiers, then ordered his nearby army units not to help. The resulting German victory annihilated any who could feasibly challenge Stalin’s rule once the Soviets liberated Warsaw in 1945.
r0B0 TIL that in 1975, North Korean embassy staff in Australia crashed their Mercedes, and when they went to the nearest house for help they were aghast to find that that they had knocked on the door of the South Korean ambassador’s residence.
R74Kw TIL that Japanese researchers have created a chair that can read a person's "butt fingerprint" by registering an individual's unique contour and pressure distribution. It might one day be used in cars as an anti-theft mechanism.