› added 11 years ago

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TIL that when Mr. T was serving in the Army, his platoon sergeant punished him by ordering him to chop down trees. However, he did not specify how many trees, so Mr. T single-handedly chopped down over seventy trees in about 4 hours, until a shocked major superseded the sergeant’s orders.

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0dwDp TIL that Potassium's main role in the body is to help maintain normal levels of fluid inside our cells. Sodium, its counterpart, maintains normal fluid levels outside of cells. Potassium also helps muscles to contract and supports normal blood pressure.
ePYb TIL fleeing the Japanese in WWII Burma, a group of refugees spent two days carving a 270-foot staircase into a mountain so that they and 52 elephants could escape
b6kj TIL that a man who gave away his fortune to charity also donated a kidney to a stranger, noting that the chances of dying as a result of the procedure were about 1 in 4,000 and “to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger”
4WKa TIL Rasputin was once a faith healer called upon to heal the Tsarevich of Russia, who was dying due to complications from hemophilia. Rasputin simply sent a telegram stating that the Tsarevich would not die. The Tsarevich recovered and Rasputin took the credit.
BgO7L TIL that the planning documents for the lower Thames crossing (a proposed road crossing in England) are 359,866 pages long across 2,383 documents, and laid end to end would stretch 66 miles -- 5 times longer than the proposed road itself