› added 11 years ago

98

TIL that Democratic Republic of the Congo is considered THE richest country in the world regarding natural resources even though its citizens are among the poorest.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mxpnx TIL, Hisashi Ouchi, whose chromosomes were literally destroyed due the extreme radiation, was kept alive, even though he wanted to die, due to his family not giving up. His heart stopped for 47 minutes.
R5906 TIL: Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." it is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion;
R7v7j TIL the Moscow plague riot of 1771 was caused by an outbreak of bubonic plague. The city's economy was mostly paralysed because industries had been closed down. All of this was followed by acute food shortages, leading to huge crowds rioting, and demands for the elimination of quarantines.
XEgD8 TIL there are two schools of grammarians: descriptives and prescriptives. Descriptives create rules based on people's use and what is generally accepted among native speakers. Rules follow the people. Prescriptives create a set of rules and tell everyone to follow them. People follow the rules.
Mxv8 TIL that the Soviet Union designed a machine gun with such a recoil that it would damage the plane it was mounted on. Fuel tanks would rupture, parts would fall off, and electronic circuits would take damage. At least three crashes can be attributed to just using the gun.