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TIL: During the 14th century ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days. This practice is where we get the word "quarantine" from the Italian "quaranta" meaning "forty"

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mx4O TIL that there is a satellite called LAGEOS that will return to earth in 8.4 million years. Inscribed on it is a picture of what scientists think the continents will look like at that time.
QNyLe TIL the movie Sahara (2005) was plagued with production problems which doubled its budget from $80M to $160M, lawsuits among the crew and being accused of violations of international law. It made $119M but failed to recoup its costs and is listed among the biggest box office failures of all time
O5va TIL no Democratic candidate for President has gotten a majority of the white vote since 1964
P1OKV TIL about ambigrams which are calligraphic writing of word so they can have similar or different meanings when viewed in different orientations.
8aVAG TIL that HTTP error code 451 (unavailable for legal reasons, e.g. censorship) is a reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451