› added 9 years ago

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TIL a Chinese doctor spent 6 years illegally building a mountainous stone penthouse on top of a residential urban tower, “complete with boulders, trees, gardens, pools and ponds.”

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ep075 TIL French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his avant garde masterpiece "Quartet For The End Of Time", inspired by Book Of Revelation and birdsong, on a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany on the available instruments. It was also premiered there in 1941.
x6Je7 TIL that in parts of the UK, a rule from 1902 mandates that homes facing each other at the rear must be built 21 meters apart. This specific distance was determined by two urban designers who measured how far apart they could see each other's nipples through their shirts.
9Y97m TIL that a 10x10 perfect “word square” has yet to be found, but has also not been disproven.
rR48x TIL that the Turkey bird is named after the country with the same name in English, while in Portuguese it is called ‘Peru’, in Arabic it is Deek Rumi ('Roman Rooster’), in Polish it is 'Indyk’ (after India), and in Turkish itself it is 'Hindi’.
b7KZ TIL Evan Mecham, Arizona Governor in 1987, rescinded MLK, Jr. Day as his first act in office and told a group of black community leaders, “You folks don’t need another holiday. What you folks need are jobs.”