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TIL Zambia’s independence was declared on the day of the 1964 Olympics’ closing ceremony, making it the first and only country to start the Olympics as one country and end it as another.

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KOQOE TIL about the Spanish Flu, one of the deadliest natural disasters in the history of humanity. In less than 3 years it infected 30% and killed up to 5% of the entire world population. Why don't many people know much about it? Because it was largely overshadowed by another major event – World War I.
Kgl6 TIL there was a very unusually high number of put/call options on United and American Airlines stock before 9/11, no other airlines saw this activity
R54ma TIL "gene guns" (referred to formally as biolistic particle delivery systems) exist. They work by firing small, metal bullets coated with genetic material at a target. While normally used on plants due to the relative ease of transformation, they have also been tested on animal cell cultures.
4M66 TIL Carl Sagan sued Apple Computer in 1995. Apple used ‘Carl Sagan’ as an internal code for the Power Macintosh 7100. After a cease-and-desist letter, Apple renamed it 'BHA’, for Butt Head Astronomer. Sagan sued. Apple then changed the name to “LAW”, short for “Lawyers are Wimps”.
ae59 TIL that to show how Classical Chinese had become an impractical language, linguist Chao Yuen Ren wrote a 92-character poem in which every syllable has the sound “shi”. The poem “Shī Shì shí shī shǐ” translates to “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den”.