› added 8 years ago

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TIL the middle finger has been used as a derogatory gesture for at least 2400 years, with the middle finger representing a phallus and the ring and index fingers representing testicles.

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N7XxE TIL that in 1518 a group of people actually danced until they died. One of the only known cases of "dancing mania"
b9yGE TIL less than five per cent of the victims of transatlantic slavery were landed on the coast of the present-day United States. Most enslaved Africans were carried to the Caribbean (45 per cent) or to Brazil (45 per cent).
J1aBj TIL many of you have a (non-genetic) lump of bone, or enthesophyte, at the lower back of your skull, from poor posture - this is because the skull is stressed, and the bone grows accordingly.
yQynM TIL that when ships pass through Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean, the nearest land mass is 1677 (2,700 kms) miles away. This means that at certain times of the day, the nearest humans are on the international space station (ISS) 258 miles (416 kms) up.
W7eMo TIL that the Chinese Community Party under Mao banned Bodybuilding in 1953, calling it a "unproductive and narcissistic pursuit of beauty", the ban was lifted 30 years later