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TIL that Russia has secret cities; you can only gain access through security checkpoints, and they only show up on classified maps. Foreigners are strictly forbidden.

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wyW1 TIL that in 1937, the Soviets started construction of the 1,624ft ‘Palace of the Soviets’ tower (almost as tall as the Taipei 101 tower) with a huge (328ft tall) statue of Lenin on the top. WWII stopped construction, and the foundations were turned into the world’s largest swimming pool
R5BM7 TIL that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas argued that plants, geographic features, and even air deserve legal standing to sue for their own protection against modern technology and life.
K8D4 TIL the taliban use space blankets to hide their heat signatures from nato forces during night attacks
m1LXM TIL about Theseus, a robotic mouse created by Claude Shannon in the 1950s, which could learn to navigate mazes using telephone relay switches, marking one of the first instances of machine learning. Theseus helped researchers better understand routing in telephone networks of that era.
glk8 TIL That Michael Jackson worked on the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but quit either because of his child molestation scandal that was going on, or that he was disappointed with the sound of the Sega Genesis. Some samples of his songs still remain in the game, though.