› added 11 years ago

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TIL Jews in many Nazi extermination camps, acknowledging death was inevitable, chose to stage uprisings in order to die honorably

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6EjbQ TIL that “Dog days of summer” refers to when the Sun occupies the same region of the sky as Sirius, the brightest star visible from any part of Earth and part of the constellation Canis Major, the Greater Dog
nWemP TIL that every nation’s passport is a shade of blue, red, green or black. There are no rules about the cover color, but most countries decided that the simple, dark hues looked the most official.
xVxD TIL Mossad agents kidnapped a Nigerian man in London in 1984, and tried to extradite him by drugging him, placing him in a crate, and shipping him abroad as diplomatic luggage. As they did not label the crates correctly, the crates could be and were searched, and the plan was foiled.
7r7GM TIL about Janet Parker, the last person on record to die of smallpox. In 1978, Parker worked above a U.K. research laboratory conducting experiments with the pathogen. Today smallpox is officially held at only two places in the world, the CDC in the U.S. and the Vector Institute in Russia.
Djwv TIL all tortoises are actually turtles and calling a tortoise a turtle is not wrong.