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TIL China’s First Emperor’s Obsessive Quest for Immortality and The Elixir of Life Led to His Death and Collapse of His Dynasty

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gMpQ8 TIL air conditioning is not popular in Europe. Only 5% of French homes are air-conditioned, 2% of German homes. Many travel sites include horror stories from Europeans describing how "unpleasant the United States is with its artificial cold, and reports of legions of Europeans who return ill."
rRkD0 TIL about Infinite Corridor, which connects the main buildings of MIT. Twice a year, the university celebrates MIThenge, an event which occurs when the corridor aligns with the plane of the sun, resulting in daylight filling the whole corridor.
oRp7E TIL that, in the years it was an active sporting arena, about half a million people (gladiators) and a million animals died fighting for spectacle at the Roman Colosseum.
wLYl1 TIL that the U.S briefly banned sliced bread in 1943. During this time, a letter appeared in The New York Times from a distraught housewife saying, in part: "I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household."
7rvLx TIL during solar eclipses, tree leaves act as pinhole cameras, resulting in trees casting crescent-shaped shadows on the ground. This effect puzzled Aristotle in the 4th Century BC.