› added 4 years ago

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TIL: Harry Kakavas lost $1.5 billion in a 14 month gambling spree that led to a pivotal landmark Australian High Court case as he claimed the casino lured him using a private jet and other incentives. He lost and the court ruled that casinos aren't obligated to protect gamblers from themselves.

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R5dBj TIL that modern nuclear submarines are so well camouflaged that in 2009, two French and British nuclear ballistic missile submarines collided by chance in the Atlantic Ocean. They were moving so slowly that they couldn't have detected each other just a few feet apart.
8NP4 TIL that in 1932 the Austrian town of Wörgl issued its own currency with a tax for holding it, in order to spur the use of currency. The town defied the Great Depression, and public works and employment continued as normal.
ByRe TIL Morphine is named after Morpheus, the Greek God of Sleep.
GOdj TIL that there’s a type of neutron star called a magnetar which has a magnetic field that’s so powerful that being within 1,000 miles of one would warp all the atoms in your body and from a distance of 100,000 miles away it would be able to wipe out the data of every credit card on the planet.
8aWNZ TIL 11-year-old Grace Bedell wrote to Abraham Lincoln in 1860 saying she hoped he would be the next president but urging him to grow a beard. She stated "You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin".