› added 6 years ago

90

TIL of the SS Pacific, a trans-Atlantic steamer that disappeared on a routine voyage between Liverpool and New York in 1856. In 1861, a message in a bottle released by a doomed passenger describing the ship sinking due to icebergs washed ashore in the Hebrides- solving the mystery.

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9wMwQ TIL county officials in China's Hubei province proposed a law in 2009 requiring civil servants to smoke $500k USD of locally made cigarettes a year to boost tax revenue
R7aWa TIL Freddie Mercury once sneaked Princess Diana in to a gay bar dressed as a man. The clientele in the bar, distracted by the presence of Mercury and comedian Kenny Everett, never noticed who she was.
ZlyY TIL that up to 150 of the worlds elite from politicians to academia, industry and the media have been meeting annually, behind closed doors, at Bilderberg conferences since 1954.
D1j6P TIL that many public libraries in the US participate in Inter Library Loan (ILL). That means you have access to virtually any book, journal,magazine or dvd held by any library in the country
R5N4Q TIL that until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.