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TIL that Tamerlane was a Turkish ruler whose tomb was discovered by Soviet archeologists in 1941. An inscription in the tomb read “Who ever opens my tomb, shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.” Two days later, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the USSR.

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v1AQK TIL Due to its high degree of microporosity, as little as 1 gram of activated charcoal has a surface area in excess of 3,000 square meters- which is the same as 3 Olympic swimming pools, 7 basketball courts, or 230 car-parking spaces.
5MvD TIL purple is known as the colour of royalty because in ancient times the only way of producing the rare purple dye was from an extraction process of a murex snail by the Phoenicians. This process was very expensive and subsequently valued higher than gold.
rNNNM TIL why brain size doesn't correlate with intelligence. People have long been tempted to link brain size and cognition. The intuitive notion that a “big brain” means “more intelligent” was first threatened some time ago, when we discovered animals with larger brains than ours: elephants and whales.
j6nlN TIL the U.K. National Autistic Society found 58% of parents identified “Thomas the Tank Engine” as helping children with autism to understand basic facial expressions, colors, and numbers, as each engine is clearly numbered, colored, and have happy, sad, or angry faces.
P7pg TIL that Ernest Hemingway killed himself, and so did his father, sister, brother and other relatives.