› added 4 years ago

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TIL that The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, the abandoned prison where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed, was purchased for $1 and converted into a tourist attraction that nets $16 million annually.

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5Vxr9 TIL the amount of time between the first settlement of New Zealand by the indigenous Māori and their first contact with Europeans is shorter than the time between their first contact with Europeans and the present day. New Zealand was unoccupied by humans until 1320.
MXrV TIL There is a water park in Germany that has banned women from using an extreme water slide because it has caused genital injury to 6 women
JP6B TIL that although they are unable to produce chlorophyll Albino Redwood trees can survive, this is because the albino trees are able fuse their roots with the roots of other Redwood and live as parasites, there are only 61 known examples of this.
KVlJ TIL the concept of the “rap battle” has existed since the 5th century, where poets would engage in “flyting,” a spoken word event where poets would insult one another in verse. The Norse god Loki is noted as having insulted other gods in verse.
6EeZX TIL about the Toba Catastrophe - the theory that 75,000 years ago, a massive volcano eruption reduced the human population to 3000, causing a genetic bottleneck that has reduced the genetic diversity in humans today.