› added 10 years ago

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TIL the US Coast Guard trains pigeons to spot lifejackets, and they’re 92% accurate.

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dD4jE TIL about Swedish A-tractors, a loophole that allows restricted cars to be registered as tractors that can be driven at 16, and has created a whole sub-culture of car mods
R7VG4 TIL that Christopher Hitchens once agreed to be waterboarded for an article in Vanity Fair. He was given two metal objects, to drop as a non-vocal signal to show that he wanted to stop, and a safe word- “red”. It only took a few seconds for him to throw the objects down and end the experiment.
AD7Wn TIL that whenever al-Qaeda organised games of volleyball, Mohammed Atef and Osama Bin Laden were forced to be on separate teams since they were both tall, and skilled players.
9wYg7 TIL there are measure for diversity of exports a country produces and their ubiquity, or the number of the countries able to produce them (and those countries’ complexity) called Economic Complexity Index. Japan currently holds first place.
woAQW TIL that, in 1947, there was a proposal to create an independent united Bengali state instead of partitioning Bengal between India and Pakistan. It was not accepted, though it did have some support. (In 1971, east Bengal, also known as East Pakistan, acquired its independence as Bangladesh.)