› added 12 years ago

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TIL in 2005 Swedish millionaire Johan Eliasch purchased a 400,000-acre (1,600 km2) area of land in the heart of the Amazon rainforest from a logging company for the sole purpose of it’s preservation.

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wogP1 TIL: 1995 Daegu gas explosion in S.Korea, over 100 people were launched into the air, rained down and crushed by debris. First responders described flattened, disfigured bodies, some stretched to nearly double their original size from the impact. The disaster remains relatively unknown today.
AQb7 TIL that during the runup to WW2 Chase Bank made $500K by selling Reichsmarks stolen from Jews that fled Germany to Nazi sympathizers in the US.
nekEd TIL Pope Clement VII personally approved Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun in 1533, 99 years before Galileo Galilei’s heresy trial for similar ideas.
yQALp TIL about Terry A. Davis, creator of the free operating software Temple OS. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early 20's, Davis created the software because he stated that God commanded him to. He was able to finish most of the software by himself before his untimely death in 2018.
oBK7W TIL that Blackpanthers planned a free breakfast program for children but the Chicago cops broke into the church they were holding it in the night before and Urinated on all the food. Regardless of the delay the program continued and fed tens of thousands of hungry kids over the span of many years.