› added 9 years ago

150

TIL: Penknives were originally used for sharpening or pointing quills to use as dip pens.

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j6jRX TIL The town of Curtis, Nebraska is so desperate for new residents they are offering free plots of land if you agre to build a house and no string cash incentives if you enroll your child in local school. The plots are on paved streets with access to utilities.
wbQ7 A Chinese billionaire once charged a $170 million painting to his Amex card just to accrue the points. [NSFW painting]
neWyr TIL that your US mailbox is the property of the US postal service; no one else is allowed to use it. FedEx exists because of a bike courier exception for "extremely urgent" mail. USPS has forced Equifax to pay a $30,000 fine for FedEx use that was not extremely urgent.
neXQP TIL the HMS Belfast, which served in D-Day and fought in the Korean War, expected to be scrapped in 1967, so the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, and the Ministry of Defence all decided that it'd be preserved. Now, it is a museum on the River Thames.
Q5YM TIL that the term Gerrymandering comes from a literal Gerrymanderer - Elbridge Gerry, who drew the voting districts of Essex County, MA in such a way that a local paper compared it to a salamander, dubbing it the ‘Gerry-mander"