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TIL Queen Victoria was fluent in Urdu and Hindi.
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E1np7
TIL that because written Chinese uses characters to represent concepts rather than sounds, speakers of different languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese can communicate through writing, but not speech.
W7gjX
TIL Space Poop Challenge, a 2016 contest sponsored by NASA for new designs of space toilet systems for use in space suits, requesting "proposed solutions for fecal, urine, and menstrual management systems to be used in the crew’s launch and entry suits over a continuous duration of up to 144 hours".
gr0QL
TIL that the heaviest UK coin made for circulation was the 1797 copper tuppence, coming in at a whopping 57 g, weighing as much as ten American quarters and more than 6.5 times heavier than the modern £1 coin. It was worth the same as two pennies.
GXaG
TIL that due to a robust immune system, Opossums are immune to a variety of deadly snake venom
kOPLm
TIL: The Library of Alexandria, one of the largest ancient stores of knowledge, burned down, losing anywhere between 40k - 400k scrolls. It is said that even today, scholars still mourn its loss as one of the largest known scholarly losses of all time.