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TIL that when choosing the name for a Chinese baby, families often follow a "generation name" to pick one of the characters in the name. Such poem is written in advance, and can predetermine the names of thirty-two or more generations, such that after hundreds of years the names spell out the poem.

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kneB TIL in 2008, the Chilean 50 peso was misspelled as “CHIIE” instead of “CHILE,” with a second “I” in place of the “L". When the error was brought to light in 2009, Gregorio Iniguez, the director of the Chile Mint, and others were fired from their jobs.
Yp9wd [TIL] that in the 1940's, the US built some locomotives for the USSR. When they were never delivered due to the cold war, they went to US railroads and became some of the most powerful engines of the day.
xEo7 TIL 1,311 people live in Verkhoyansk, Russia. A town with an avg. temp of -45 °C (-50 °F) in January that was also attacked by a pack of 400 wolves last year. The sun currently rises at 2pm and sets at 3:30pm.
b6n0Q TIL that the farm that had been in James Camerons family for 170 years and that he grew up spending summers on, is proposed to become the same type of Mega Quarry as seen in Avatar.
p848N TIL the inventor and promoter of leaded petrol, Thomas Midgley Jr, went on to also invent Freon - the first chloroflurocarbon. His last invention, a pully system to help him get out of bed while suffering polio, tangled up one day and strangled him.