› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the Chinese city of Guangzhou had no subway whatsoever 20 years ago. Today, its subway system has 186 stations and is 191 miles/307 km long. It is today the world’s fourth busiest metro system, beating New York’s, London’s, Moscow’s and Paris’ in terms of ridership.

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via ift.tt

69Br7 TIL that during the 1960-70s, the Danish government had doctors fit intrauterine devices (IUDs) into thousands of Greenlandic Inuit girls and women, without their knowledge or consent, as part of a program to control the indigenous birth rate in Greenland
oBdkL TIL Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw, made his last stand in homemade bulletproof armor and it scared the police so much they thought he was a bunyip or the devil
LQ58Q TIL that the XB-70 Valkyrie Mach 3 bomber was considered obsolete before it was even built, and that the prototypes were constructed to test the effects of high speed long distance flights.
Y7Xgd TIL that Maillard reaction makes a toast more flavoursome compared to a slice of bread.
Lk50d TIL that the Soviet Union successfully landed 10 probes on the surface of Venus between the years 1961 and 1984. In spite of the short life spans of the Venera landers due to the extreme surface conditions, several of the landers were still successful in transmitting imagery from the surface.