› added 12 years ago

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TIL blue jeans are illegal in North Korea because they are a symbol of American imperialism.

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X0YyD TIL the British used the Indian Press Act of 1910 to ban newspapers and jail Indian nationalists for “exciting racial animosity” and "hate" for simply for demanding jobs and independence.
awGko TIL that James Franco launched a college course entitled "Master Class: Editing James Franco...with James Franco," in which student editors are to compile a 30 minute documentary on Franco, using behind the scenes footage of Franco supplied by Franco, to "create a cinematic image of James Franco."
bw04 TIL Queen Elizabeth is a trained mechanic
gr8ay TIL: An Indian mathematician identified Mt. Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852. Using trigonometry, he calculated its height to be 29,000 ft. In 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nepal determined the actual height to be 29,031 ft - a difference of 31 ft from the 1852 estimate.
N7PEE TIL that the first known recording of a human voice was made in 1860, but was only intended to show a sound wave visually, not to be played back. In 2008, it was optically scanned and converted to a sound file, revealing it to be a man singing "Au clair de la lune".