› added 6 years ago

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TIL Iceland has a Horse Naming Commission that oversees horse names across the country to ensure that no horse gets a foreign, vulgar, or inappropriate name.

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Xr4Q TIL that larger birds such as geese fly in “V ” formation, because the whole flock adds at least 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own. Also, the geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
DQW4v TIL after meeting at a dinner in 1837, french PM François Guizot and Princess Dorothea von Lieven became enamored and started writing to echother every single day. In the next 20 years, they exchanged at least 5000 letters
b90YE TIL First 13 Chernobyl firefighters were taken to Moscow and were treated according to Dr. Robert Gale's instructions and only 2 survived. Second group of 11 firefighters were taken to Kiev and were treated by a different method - all 11 were saved.
KOpQJ TIL that the term "420" was coined by five students in 1971 at San Rafael High School to signal a meetup at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to take a hit.They chose that specific time because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then.
7r5VO TIL J Robert Oppenheimer, inventor of the A-bomb, resigned as leader of Los Alamos. The program had shifted focus to thermonuclear weapons, and Oppenheimer vehemently opposed the hydrogen bomb and similar weapons on the grounds that they were more destructive than mankind could responsibly control.