› added 6 years ago

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TIL In 2016, a man was paid $75 in the US after being wrongly imprisoned for 31 years and couldn't even cash it for 3 months because he had no ID

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via reddit.com

wRQ6 TIL humans hadn’t detected any planets outside of our solar system until 1991, just 26 years ago. Before then, we had no evidence that planets existed around any other star in the universe.
99rG TIL Joe Arridy was named happiest inmate on death row. He had an IQ of 46 and played with a toy train given to him by the warden. Due to his lack of understanding, he smiled on his way to the gas chamber.
Xg4R TIL the Tetris theme is actually a Russian folk song called “Korobeiniki.”
nEvY TIL that humans have explored 5%-7% of the ocean floor and less than 1% of the ocean itself. Oceans cover 70% of the earth’s surface: over 60% of the planet has never been seen by humans.
yQ4PJ TIL that fearing job losses caused by mechanization, Queen Elizabeth I denied William Lee a patent for his knitting machine in the late 1500s. He had to move to France, where he was granted a patent by Henry IV, the King of France