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TIL that when Parker Brothers tried to introduce a german version of Risk, the board game in which players try to dominate a map of world, the German government threatened to ban it on the grounds that it might encourage imperialist and militaristic impulses in the nation’s youth.

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gMkRL TIL one of the best Go players in the world retired in 2019 after losing 1-4 against the AlphaGo program. He argued that he could never be the top Go player due to the increasing dominance of AI, calling them "an entity that cannot be defeated". He was the only one to win a match against AlphaGo.
ADBla TIL evidence of Homo erectus having lived on remote islands 150 miles of the coast of Africa suggests they were capable of crossing long distances over the sea, between 500,000 and a million years ago, which implies that they built boats.
nW9JG TIL After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, engineers carried diesel fuel up 17 flights of stairs in buckets to keep the generators running to power a data center.
jGeE TIL In London from 1682 one could buy fire insurance: you attached a metal plate to their building ensuring that if there were a fire their insurance company would fight to extinguish it. If the building wasn’t insured the fire wasn’t put out unless it threatened to spread to an insured building.
XEnyQ TIL: Raccoons are not native to Germany. They were brought there in the 1920s for their pelts. During World War II, an Allied bomb hit a raccoon farm wall, allowing a dozen or so to escape. Today, German cities are being overrun by millions of raccoons!