› added 11 months ago

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TIL almost all bananas come from two wild species. Bananas are grown in 135 countries with China and India accounting for 27%. They can be used for paper and textile making and are technically a berry.

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p80ZA TIL that the first recorded example of written Finnish dates back to c. 1450 and reads: "I want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able to".
pAdA TIL A Japanese pilot waged a one-man war against the inhabitants of a Hawaiian island he crash landed on during Pearl Harbour. He was assisted by three Japanese locals. This incident ultimately contributed to the decisison to intern Japanese-Americans during the war.
KObrJ TIL that in 1906, The Daily Mail hired novelist William Le Queux to write a story of the most likely path for a hypothetical German invasion of England. When that path went mostly through areas with low 'Daily Mail' readership, they ordered it rewritten to more directly impact their existing readers
Vvvp TIL a British Gurkha soldier Dip Prasad Pun killed 30 Taliban single-handedly in Afghanistan
W98Y TIL: A city in England got rid of all it’s traffic lights and said that “Drivers will now be expected to use a combination of common sense and courtesy to negotiate the junction of the town’s High Street"