› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the word quarantine comes from an Italian variant of ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning forty days, which was the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic. They would fly this flag known as “Yellow Jack”.

rRJ14 TIL Carbon-dated around the early 15th century, the Voynich manuscript is written in an untranslatable language. Studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, the manuscript has never been demonstrably deciphered and claims that it has been decoded have never been independently verified.
PRnE TIL that humans/human relatives lived in San Diego, California 130,000 years ago, according to recent archaeological findings. The discovery is 115,000 years older than any other such evidence previously found in the Americas.
8exPX TIL that Jackie Kennedy became the First First Lady and first American woman to be awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest civilian award by the French Government for her work as a cultural ambassador of the United States and contributions to U.S foreign relations.
VpBQ TIL that American speech is punctuated with “uh” & “um”, English speech with “er” & “erm”, Japanese with “ā”, “anō”, & “ēto”, German with “äh”, French with “euh”– basically, every language uses different sounds to interrupt themselves while their brain is working on forming thoughts into words.
V77D TIL that all US astronauts are required to learn Russian as part of their extensive training, and have to be able to run the ISS using Russian-language training manuals if necessary.