› added 12 years ago

215

TIL people born in the Pacific Northwest have the cleanest English dialect

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QN7LM TIL that Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair. He supposedly drafted the Declaration of Independence while sitting in his own creation, making it one of the first recorded uses of a swivel chair in history.
8dEa TIL that gay marriage is not legal in Germany, and gay couples are not allowed to adopt a child together.
Brpex TIL Stephen King kept a severe alcohol and cocaine addiction hidden from his family for eight years. He claims he kept the addiction well-hidden but eventually, "...the books [started] to show it after a while. 'Misery' is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number-one fan."
9w0ZM TIL during the negotiations to end the Spanish-American War, Spain originally rejected the US demand for the whole of the Philippines and wanted to cede only Mindanao or the Sulu Islands. US negotiators responded by proposing to pay $20 million for the whole of the Philippines, which Spain accepted.
epkL5 TIL: That following the solar eclipse of August 11 1999, the BMJ reported only 14 cases of eye damage from improper viewing of the eclipse, a number lower than initially feared. In one of the most serious cases the patient had looked at the Sun without eye protection for 20 minutes.