› added 10 months ago

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TIL about "Grandpa Indian" (Vovô Índio), a Brazilian character created in the 1930s with the intention of providing a "patriotic" alternative to Santa Claus in Christmastide imagery. Promoted by the far-right Integralist movement, the attempt was widely mocked, and few trace of the character remain.

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OGyZL TIL that about 100,000 people died each year in India due to the collapse of vulture populations. Vultures were crucial to the ecosystem & their near extinction due to accidental poisoning extended the presence of animal carcasses in the local environment, increasing rabies & reducing water quality.
ep95J TIL that Mary Anderson invented the first functional windshield wiper in 1903 after observing a New York City streetcar driver struggling to see through snow, but she never profited from her invention.
xVX07 TIL you don’t forget things you did when you were drunk, your brain just never recorded the memories as the events happened.
xVkRB TIL one theory why the human sense of smell is worse than our closest ancestors (monkeys and apes)is that since the start of agriculture, humans have been forced to live in crowded tents and huts with many other people, so we evolved a weaker sense of smell to better deal with it.
p8a6p TIL the largest movement of physical wealth in history was during WW2, Operation Fish had 186,332 gold bars and more than 8 million ounces of gold coins sent to Canada from the UK with not even one crate or treasury bill going missing.