› added 4 months ago

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TIL it is illegal to die in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, Norway. Anyone who is dying is asked to leave for the mainland. Burials are also illegal due to the permafrost and any bodies are shipped to the mainland for burial.

VMJ0Z TIL that in 1961 two nuclear bombs were dropped on North Carolina when the US bomber carrying them broke up in midair. Although neither detonated, one of the bombs was fully armed and it is unknown to this day why it failed. Each bomb had 250 times the destructive power of the one used at Hiroshima.
WV5L TIL that due to the “welfare cliff”, a single mother of two is better off with a $29,000 per year job than she is with a $69,000 per year job.
4XOW6 TIL The East India Company controlled its own army, which by 1800 comprised some 200,000 soldiers, more than twice the membership of the British Army at that time. The army was used to carry out officially sanctioned looting within Indian States, along with forced over-taxation.
OG0OY TIL about the Witches Well, a (now) dry fountain installed outside Edinburgh Castle, in 1894, to memorialize the thousands of victims, mostly women, accused of witchcraft who were burned at the stake, nearby. It is the only such memorial to these victims in Scotland.
KOMAJ TIL BMW used prisoners from concentration camps like Dachau to build their cars and plane engines during the second world war. By the end of the war, almost 50% of the 50,000-person workforce at BMW consisted of prisoners from concentration camps.