› added 1 year ago

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TIL - squatting in a non-residential building in the UK is not a crime

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via reddit.com

loJ1r TIL that England used to have a tax based on your number of windows. This mostly led to the building of homes with fewer windows (giving rise to the phrase "daylight robbery"), but conversely also led to some of the rich building homes with an intentionally large amount of windows in order to flex.
aOk0 TIL that on August 21, 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a wave of concentrated carbon dioxide that killed around 1,800 people and thousands of animals almost instantaneously. One witness said, “On that day there were no flies on the dead. The flies were dead too.”
5Y8eB TIL that there is no such thing as real truffle oil. It's made with vegetable oil, artificial flavour, and dried flakes of cheap truffle that add no flavour but allow it to be called truffle oil.
rNKXM TIL during the Civil War, the US government started printing bills in fractional dollars, rather than coins, due to a metal shortage. Congress passed a law forbidding living people to be on money after the bills' designer put his own face on them, rather than a US president's.
xEn1 TIL that WWI was one of the first wars where there were more deaths from actual combat than disease.