› added 5 years ago

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TIL after the Boy Scouts changed their rules and brand to make themselves gender neutral (to allow girls to join) they got sued by the Girl Scouts of America who considered their rebrand a violation of their copyrights.

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6a4X TIL Cicada song is so loud it repels the birds that would normally eat them.
oB0ME TIL that it's impossible to program truly random sequences, due to all software being completely deterministic, which results in all pseudorandom sequences ultimately being recursive
D1WPv TIL that Roger Ebert, Weird Al Yankovic, Jerry Seinfeld, Terry Gillam, and Dave Gibbons (the author of Watchmen), among others, all give credit to MAD Magazine for the reason they're in their respective careers and for being one of the largest influences on them.
WkY8L TIL Jack O'Lanterns got their name from the myth about Jack who tricked the devil into not claiming his soul, however he was also denied entrance to heaven. The devil gave Jack one burning piece of coal that he carried in a carved out turnip as he roamed the earth for eternity.
VQLZ TIL that the number of fires in the US declined more than 50% from 1981 to 2011, due to reduced smoking and fire-resistant materials, and that only 5% of calls for firefighters are now fires