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TIL Samuel Johnson wrote a dictionary in 1755, in which he defined oats as: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” A Scottish man was said by Sir Walter Scott to have retorted, “Yes, and where else will you see such horses and such men?”

BgR6e TIL, that 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu Hawaii is the only official royal residence on US soil. When finished in 1882 it had indoor plumbing, electric lighting, and an early telephone. It had electrical lighting 8 years before the Whitehouse did in 1891.
mx5LE TIL Canadian Indigenous incarceration rates are 10 times higher than the non-Indigenous population. Higher than South Africa at the height of apartheid. In Saskatchewan, if you’re Indigenous, you’re 33 times more likely to be incarcerated than than the non-Indigenous.
0ypM TIL: in 2008 Mississippi, a lady attempted to sell her granddaughter for $2,000 and a car. Police could not charge her or her daughter, the child’s mother, with selling the child because in Mississippi, the practice is legal.
4k4NR TIL after the 16th Governor of Hong Kong was given a particularly distasteful Cantonese name, that could interpreted as 'toilet bowl's shit', the government has since provided a very refined translation service for British officials so that their names are indistinguishable from the locals' names.
pY0N4 TIL that the only place in the world where Japanese is an official language is Angaur, an island in Palau. Japan doesn’t have the de jure official language.