› added 8 years ago

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TIL that students at Oxford University are required to wear academic dress for all of their examinations - including a suit, gown, bowtie, and colour coded carnation. Students wear different gowns depending on their grades. Cambridge no longer has such dress for exams.

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9YJNG TIL about Dusan Popov, MI6 triple agent who deceived Germans during WWII that D-Day would occur in Calais, not Normandy. Popov was famous for his playboy lifestyle which made him one of primary inspirations for James Bond.
ODWa TIL George Washington Custis Lee, the son of Confederate general Robert E. Lee successfully sued the government for its confiscation of Arlington and was paid 150,000 dollars. His lawyer was Robert Todd Lincoln the only surviving child of Abraham Lincoln.
0YZj TIL Dyson Airblade hand-driers spread 60 times more germs than standard air dryers, and 1,300 times more than standard paper towels, according to research published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology.
v1aY8 TIL Americans use the term "downtown" to describe a city's "city center" regardless its geographic location because the term was inherited from New York — where businesses occupied the bottom of Manhattan island
J1bl TIL that Ian Fleming, the original author of the James Bond series, also wrote the famous children’s book “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang”