› added 7 years ago

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TIL Singapore is the largest importer of sand world-wide and the world’s highest per capita consumer of sand at 5.4 tonnes per inhabitant

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4WBw TIL Room 101, the torture chamber in George Orwell’s 1984, was named after a meeting room at the BBC where Orwell would have to sit through tortuously boring meetings.
p8d8A TIL that Turkey Vultures have been & sometimes are still used to detect natural gas leaks from pipelines; the odor that gas companies add to gas (so we can detect it since it's odorless) is the same as rotting flesh, which leads the vultures to congregate in the sky in the area of the leak.
dDWgj TIL that "seed laws" are a thing, where you can't use seeds from a plant you bought
XE9r6 TIL Great White sharks are warm-blooded
5Y9En TIL the word "utopia" is a pun. It comes from the Greek word for "good place" but also "no place." It's good, but it doesn't exist.