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Today I learned that everything I'd heard or read about the Mid-Atlantic/Transatlantic accent (old accent from old films) was wrong. It had nothing to do with "broad appeal" to Brits and Americans, and it wasn't a standardized taught accent

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7r17Z TIL the European Union will require "speed limiters" in all cars by 2022. The technology uses road sign and GPS data to determine the legal speed limit and prevents the vehicle from exceeding the legal limit.
x6O9o TIL The Isles of Scilly, located 45km off the coast of mainland UK, is home to the world's smallest football league. There are only two teams who play each other every Sunday. They also take part in the Lyonesse Cup, where the winner is awarded a 6mm tall cup named the "World's Smallest Cup".
x7Ek TIL: The United States has “one of the smallest, least prominent warnings” on cigarette packages of any country in the world
m1aJy TIL in 1940, when Paramount asked Fleischer Studios to created a Superman cartoon, Fleischer thought it would be too hard to make. In an attempt to avoid making the cartoon, they quoted four times the cost of an average cartoon for the budget ($100k). To their shock, Paramount agreed to the budget.
p8Ym8 Imagine you spent your entire childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood stuck inside a small closet. One day, after much of your life, has passed you by, you realize that you can just open up the door, change into some more appropriate clothes, and hit the town! Free at last, what would you do first? Maybe sing a bit? Go on a few dates? By the way, you have two to four weeks to live. Yikes. This is not unlike the situation most cicadas face, as they spend almost their entire lives underground. For example, many of the cicadas emerging in 2016 have been underground for 17 years! To put that in perspective, the last Star Wars movie these insects saw was literally a menace. Imagine waking up in a world without Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray! Come to think of it, things are really looking up since 1999. A cicada’s ear-piercing call is intended to attract a gal pal. Considering that these little creatures’ time above ground is so fleeting, they need to lock down a date as soon as possible. This could be why most cicadas are louder than the average fraternity pledge. Adult males are the ones making such a racket, and some species can register sounds louder 100 decibels when calling for a potential mate. In this week’s Today I Learned, National Geographic Emerging Explorer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur explains how cicadas sing such a loud song.