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TIL up until the 90s Oscar voters for best documentary used to show up to a screening theater and given a flashlight. 15 minutes after a documentary is played, voters can turn on their flashlight to stop the documentary. If 3/4 of the voters have their lights on, they can move on to the next doc.

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VVNZ TIL the Aboriginal Mbabaram word for dog is “dog”. This type of coincidence is called a “false cognate” and there are many occurrences throughout the world.
GY8w7 TIL Britain prepared secret ‘Auxiliary Units’ tasked with guerrilla activities in case of a full scale invasion and would operate behind enemy lines to cause as much destruction as possible to German forces and had survival rates of just 12 days if activated and lived underground.
gyBW TIL Scientists put slime mold onto a model of a map of Tokyo, with food representing urban centers. After a day, it created a network almost identical to Tokyo’s actual rail network. Human designers created that network to be as efficient as possible; slime mold did the same, but without a brain
QNNYd TIL a plant hopper (Issus coleoptratus) is the first species found to have functional biological gears
xV4l5 TIL that Katsuya Eguchi, the creator for the game Animal Crossing, drew his inspiration for it from experiences of having to move from where he grew up to moving to Nintendo headquarters and wanted to "recreate the feeling of being alone in a new town, away from friends and family."