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TIL The Red Cross raised over half a billion dollars to provide housing for the Haitians after their devastating earth quake, and only built a total of 6 homes

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R5W74 TIL; The flag planted on the moon by the Apollo 11 crew was purchased at a local Sears store.
6lJ8 TIL Land Rover’s first design had the steering wheel in the middle so it could be used in left or right side driving counties without modifications.
X0DbP TIL John Von Neumann proposed an idea of self replicating spacecraft. Robert Freitas calcd they could colonize the milky way in 500k years. That we see no evidence of them implies we are alone. Carl Sagan argued rate of replication would consume so much mass no intelligent species would build them
wLMxW TIL that Zhang Aiqin (Eggman), popular in meme culture for his egg-shaped head and singing Yi Jian Mei, is an actor and director.
XE4VR TIL British spymaster Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first head of the MI6 and the inspiration of James Bond's M, started the practice of using semen as invisible ink during WWI. It worked well, until they realised that the letters smelled awful when received.