› added 5 years ago

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TIL the Kublai Khan invaded Japan in 1274 with 33,000 troops but failed due to weather. Kublai Khan again invaded Japan in 1279 with 140,000 troops & made it 15 km away from the city of Fukuoka but again failed due to a typhoon. It was here the term kamikaze (divine wind) was born.

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0dAZ1 TIL that Agave - the source of all tequila - is a member of the Asparagus family
4X0PR TIL Royal Bank of Canada has a program that draws students for a summer-long challenge to develop solutions to real-world business problems, like detecting sophisticated cyber bots. The bank files patents to protect the technology and use students' innovation in their business
4XpJo TIL that the single oldest complete piece of music is actually from 1400BC. It's known as "Hurrian Hymn No. 6" and an example one can listen to is heavily contested over because it is one of about five "rival decipherments of the notation, each yielding entirely different results".
5V508 TIL of J. L. Hunter "Red" Rountree, who after his wife passed and seemingly with nothing left to live for decided to commit his first bank robbery at the age of 86. Red blamed banks for making him bankrupt and by the time he passed away in 2004 he had robbed 2 more banks.
AE8o TIL in 1957 a US Air Force pilot caught in bad weather discovered his prototype jet fighter had no cockpit lighting. He managed to navigate and land the aircraft by periodically flicking a Zippo cigarette lighter and using the flame to read the instruments.