› added 4 years ago

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TIL that in 1981 10 million Poles (1/3rd of working people) joined the trade union Solidarność forcing communist goverment into democratic elections.

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x6NPk TIL the most effective surrender leaflet in WW2 was known as the "Passierschein". It was designed to appeal to German sensibilities for official, fancy documents printed on nice paper with official seals and signatures. It promised safe passage and generous treatment to any who presented it.
eLGn TIL the term “third world country” has nothing to do with poverty, it simply refers to countries after WW2 that did not align with either the Western US aligned coalition or the Soviet bloc.
Vegp TIL That Sylvia Plath, Steven Tyler, Ray Charles, James Taylor, Marianne Faithful and David Foster Wallace were all patients at McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts
BgLyr TIL a high school student wrote a text-based moon landing simulation in 1969 using a PDP-8 minicomputer. It was "a question and answer game" - at each stage of the landing you'd find out your current velocity and then you had to enter how much fuel to use. If you burned fuel too early, you'd crash.
Ky7G TIL that salting fresh pineapple reduces the “acid burn” effect you get after eating too much of it (and it makes the pineapple taste sweeter)