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TIL The Quran allows coffee because it defines intoxicants as which “covers the intellect,” i.e., causes inebriation or drunkenness like beer, or euphoria such as cocaine or amphetamines.Caffeine is not an intoxicant in that sense, but rather only a mild stimulant and hence permissible

jNwLn TIL The rescue of Denmark’s Jews during WWII was so successful, that 99% of the country’s Jewish population escaped. From October 1943, 7,220 of Denmark's 7,800 Jews were ferried to Sweden. At the request of the group, Yad Vashem honoured the Danish Resistance as a whole, than as individuals.
rAy0 TIL that Winston Churchill, after being told that he could not drink in front of Saudi King due to the King’s religious beliefs, said “my religion prescribed an absolute sacred rite smoking cigars and drinking alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and the intervals between them.”
j6kyn TIL In Canada 2013, two little boys on a sleepover were strangled to death by a 100lb python. The snake came thru a vent from a pet shop below their room. The owner was eventually found not guilty of negligent homicide.
9wERG TIL that after reading Rutherford’s paper on atomic disintegration, Henry Adams wrote in 1902 : “At this rate, thought will be overturned; law replaced by force [...] explosives will reach cosmic violence.” Less than 50 years later, the first nuclear bomb exploded in New Mexico, July 16, 1945.
rRNGM Frozen in time, Franz Josef Land is one of the last lingering remnants of the truly wild Arctic. The remote and nearly uninhabited 192-island archipelago is renowned for its biodiversity, which includes polar bears, walruses, bowhead whales, belugas, and narwhals. The intensifying impact of climate change, however, nearly turned this serene environment deadly for National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala and his crew.