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951

TIL that more than 85% of Warsaw’s historic centre was reduced to ruins in the second world war; the city was then reconstructed from the 18th century cityscapes of the Venetian painter Bernardo Bellotto

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4XvYw TIL The three organs that give electric eels the ability to generate electricity take up four fifths of its body. They can also control their victim's nervous system and muscles via electrical pulses, so they can keep prey from escaping or force it to move so they can locate its position
5YaAQ TIL that the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights are incredible light shows that caused by collisions between electrically charged particles and Earth’s atmosphere. They occur mostly in high altitudes near the poles. These events inspire stories from prehistoric times
A1Xw TIL In 2005, a German court upheld the right of citizens to flirt at work in response to Wal-Mart Germany’s policy banning any sign of attraction b/w its workers. The court said that such regulations may be acceptable in the US, they are incompatible w/ German labor law & employees’ personal rights.
wb6P TIL that seahorses engage in an eight hour courtship dance which includes spinning around, swimming side by side and changing colors.
yVJD8 TIL Atom-bomb designer Hans Bethe fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and joined Cornell University where he stayed on as Professor until he died at 98 in 2005, the last of the giants of Los Alamos. The weapon’s reality “was worse than we expected,” Bethe recalled