› added 6 years ago

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TIL that when a city builds more roads to reduce traffic the speed gains will usually disappear within a month, if not weeks.

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0w4NA TIL Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard chose his son Quentin to succeed him after his eldest son quit the church. Quentin, who wanted to be a pilot and was gay (against doctrine), committed suicide. When his father discovered this, he shouted "That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me!"
M7K5W TIL about “Franco’s hajj”. A program instituted by the fascist dictator of Spain General Francisco Franco to sponsor Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in a bid to court the Islamic World. The program lasted for several decades.
oGVY TIL that city life is potentially diverging a population of raccoons down an alternate evolutionary path in comparison to their rural counterparts. City raccoons show higher intelligence and just a few decades of city life has changed raccoon populations more than the previous 40,000 years.
R5Vb4 TIL the link between the nutcracker and Christmas was due to the popularity of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker." Which, when introduced to the US, "helped make nutcracker dolls a Christmas decoration and a seasonal icon across Western culture"
E7pw TIL in 1770 a man invented a machine that could play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. The “android” that played the game was nicknamed The Turk (as was the machine itself). It wasn’t until 1857 that it was revealed to be a hoax (a chess master was hiding in the machine).