› added 5 years ago

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TIL during the Punic Wars, the Romans realized they had no clue how to build ships. They decided to rent row boats, run aground a Carthaginian ship, and plagiarize the designs. The entire first fleet of their new Navy was based off this ship, but learning to row proved more challenging.

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KNJR TIL In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the scene where Jack was dancing and yelling “I’ve got a jar of dirt.” was not scripted. All of the cast’s reactions are actually real.
10vX TIL when brought before McCarthy’s ‘House Committee on Un-American Activities’ communist investigation, Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, named names when asked about actors in his union who could be 'communist sympathizers’. This resulted in his first wife divorcing him.
VMpd0 TIL Leonhard Euler was the most prolific mathematician of all time. He wrote more than 500 books and papers during his lifetime — about 800 pages per year — with 400 further publications appearing posthumously. His collected works and correspondence are still not completely published
xVZa0 TIL that there are more people buried in the Catacombs than the entire current population of Paris.
5dD8 TIL that Dockers recently increased the size of their ‘coin pockets’ to accommodate the growing size of smartphones