› added 12 years ago

89

TIL In 1674, Manhattan was traded from the Dutch to the English for Run Island, an island in Indonesia which is now nearly uninhabited.

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jRrQ TIL the World’s Smallest Guitar is the Size of a Red Blood Cell.
n8Od TIL of Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in the entire Second World War. In 1942 he falsified his age to 18 to join the Army and until 1945 he participated in battles on Sicily, at Salerno, Anzio and Rome, and also in southern France and the Alsace region.
4XAwX TIL that Dodo birds didn't die of extinction on Mauritius because the Portuguese ate them. The Dutch arrived later and brought pigs to the island which ate the Dodo eggs out of their nests. Dodo birds kept their nests on the ground because there weren't any predators before.
1n9X TIL that a jury could completely choose to ignore the law or evidence presented to them and hand down their own verdict, regardless if the defendant is obviously guilty or not guilty.
AN7J7 TIL of the proposed Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, whose 100m aperture would have allowed it to see objects 1500x fainter than the Hubble Telescope and analyze extrasolar planets for molecules indicating life. It was cancelled due to the €1.5 billion cost being too high