› added 5 years ago

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TIL: Like all male Swiss citizens, Roger Federer was subject to compulsory military service in the Swiss Armed Forces. However, he was ruled "unsuitable" due to an unspecified injury. Instead he served in the civil protection force & was required to pay 3% of his taxable income as an alternative.

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JMDQ TIL When Tupac Shakur misbehaved as a child, his mother Afeni would make her son read The New York Times as punishment.
8aZPa TIL that Cocaine, Nicotine and Caffeine all belong to a group of chemicals known as alkaloids that also includes quinine(a malaria drug), HHT(a leukemia drug) and Atropine(the toxic component in deadly nightshade). These chemicals tend to be basic but can also be neutral or even weakly acidic.
YpjeP TIL farmers in Africa use beehives to protect their crops from the largest and arguably most destructive crop pest in Africa: the elephant. Bees can’t sting through their thick hides but they can sting sensitive areas like the eyes, mouth, and inner trunk - they hear the hive buzzing and flee.
rw6o TIL Amazon’s daily record for orders was more than 26.5 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 306 items per second. That day Amazon sold enough copies of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy to create a stack 445 times taller than the Space Needle.
M70ma TIL of "gas bag" vehicles developed during the gasoline shortages of the World Wars. They used 'town gas', a by-product of the process of turning coal into cokes.