› added 11 years ago

110

TIL Japanese swordsmiths are only permitted to smith two swords a month.

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aGQb TIL in 1984 celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, the actor Martin Sheen, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and PGP-creator Phil Zimmermann were in police jail together. They had been arrested after breaking into the Nevada nuclear test site.
9YpMm TIL The number of girls in India who drop out of school due to menstruation is 1 in 5 (20%).
4kPma TIL famous pirate Sir Francis Drake once brought 200 Muslims to Roanoke after freeing them from slavery.
5YlyD TIL that Mirrors didn’t exist until circa 500 BC so the only way people knew what they looked like was by looking at their reflection in still water. Thus, water was a symbol of the self and a symbol of death.
rNAPe TIL that in the 1700s eccentric farmer James Hirst tried to ride a bull like a horse and train an otter to fish but got banned from a town when his wicker carriage crashed into a shop window.