› added 9 years ago

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TIL that weird smell on your hands after you handle coins isn’t the smell of the coins, it’s an odour produced by your skin oil decomposing on contact with the metal.

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vPKaB TIL of the 'skimmer' genus of birds - their outsize lower beaks are used for catching fish at the surface of water
v1dxD TIL that the term "canola oil" is short for "Canada Oil low acid," a name coined to avoid the less marketable word for the product, "rapeseed oil"
R7lpQ TIL that 99% of the wasabi consumed in the world is not actually wasabi, it’s horseradish + green food colouring. Real wasabia japonica is one of the most expensive crops to grow and is a temperamental semiaquatic herb native to the mountain streams of central Japan.
1MMW TIL The United States Defense Budget of $698 Billion is More Than the Next Seventeen Nations Combined
neQrG TIL George R. R. Martin's family used to be wealthy owning a successful construction business however, they lost it all during the Great Depression. In 1953, the family moved to a federal housing project in Bayonne, New Jersey.