› added 11 years ago

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TIL That the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t lawfully exist. Congress never created it. The Dept. of Treasury created it via a Treasury Order, which was cancelled in 2005.

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via reddit.com

ep0e6 TIL The star SMSS J031300.36−670839.3, while only 6,000 light years from Earth, is 13.8 billion years old, more or less the same age as the universe.
5Y1D TIL Natalie Portman helped with the writing of “The Social Network” by providing inside information about the social life at Harvard because she was a Harvard student at the time Facebook first appeared there. The lines “Who was the movie star?”, “Does it matter?” in the movie refers to her.
8e1r8 TIL that the heat of the pyroclastic surge produced by the Vesuvius explosion was so great that their brains were vitrified (turned to glass). This is the first time this has been seen.
OKJ7 TIL When a giant Asian hornet enters a Japanese honeybee’s hive, hundreds of bees emerge to form a violently-vibrating ball around it; the frenzy increases CO2 levels & the temperature to 115°F, which together are lethal to the hornet but not to the bees which can withstand up to 122°F.
698LZ TIL about Tarrare, a French spy and Performer who had such an appetite he would eat live cats and puppies, cadavers from morgues and was even suspected of kidnapping and eating a baby. He would also eat from heaps of dung in the street and as a spy, the entire army's rations.