› added 12 years ago

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TIL that during the 1940s the Soviet Union asked Coca Cola to produce a white, less American Coke

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d8omd TIL that Cicero's cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea(a type of lentil), cicer. Cicero was urged to change this deprecatory name when he entered politics, but refused, saying that he would instead make Cicero a glorious name.
yNE8 TIL that Kobe Bryant’s parents had to cosign his first NBA contract, because he was only 17 when he was drafted.
e09KD TIL that Arthur C. Clarke (served RAF there), Simon Pegg (studied there), Gordon Ramsay (moved there at age 9), and of course William Shakespeare (lived there) all were connected with the small locus of Stradford-Upon-Avon in England.
0wokN TIL Hangul is the alphabetic system used for writing the Korean language, but in North Korea it is known as Chosŏn muntcha. Because of the influence of Confucianism and of Chinese culture, Hangul was not used by scholars or Koreans of the upper classes until after 1945
wBb1 TIL that a ‘second’ on a clock is called that way because it is the second division of an hour in 60 increments (the first being minutes)