› added 12 years ago

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TIL - in 2009 Bill Gates purchased the rights to the Feynman Lectures so that he could annotate them and make them freely available.

Read more research.microsoft.com

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j6x6v TIL the first Native American to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs was Ely S. Parker in 1869, he was also the only Native American to head it until 1966.
kAxW TIL that Ripley’s Believe It or Not was researched by a man who spent every day at the NYC Public library for 52 years, discovering at least 62,192 amazing facts and anecdotes. One skeptical reader wrote 27,167 double-checking letters to sources and never found an unsubstantiated item.
l7KaN TIL Vikings Used Urine-Boiled Fungus, known as touchwood, to Create a Smoldering Material That Allowed Them to Carry Fire with Them
0N55 TIL there’s a website where you can see the progress of removing the Costa Concordia
MeoWB TIL that for decades the CIA owned and ran Crypto, a Swiss company that supplied cryptography equipment to many countries; naturally, the machines were rigged to give US spooks access to everyone's communications.