› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Russians call roller coasters "American Mountains" even though roller coaster are called "Russian Mountains" in many languages around the world

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16rQd TIL in 1963 a 16 year old sent a 4 question survey to 150 well-known authors (75 of which replied) in order to prove to his English tutor that writers don't intentionally add symbolic content to their books.
xZO7 TIL that there is not much science backing the idea that salt is bad for you.
pY6O8 TIL the biggest single prize ever captured during the Golden Age of Piracy was in 1721 by John Taylor & Olivier La Bouche. Their two pirate ships boarded the Portuguese treasure ship Nostra Senhora de Cabo which had £500K in valuables & general cargo worth £375K (a total of over $250 million today).
4keeg TIL that half of all fertile women in Greenland in the 60s and 70s were forcibly given IUDs in a genocidal campaign, where the birth rate was cut in half.
16GWW TIL the 1890s Art Nouveau style inspired the psychedelic look of the 1960s