› added 11 years ago

519

TIL the sunset on Mars is blue.

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4XPlw TIL that in Thailand, white elephants are considered sacred and are a symbol of royal power, with all those discovered presented to the king - and that the status of kings has been evaluated by the number of white elephants in their possession. The previous king had 21, an unprecedented achievement
AD5rg TIL the setting of the Chronicles of Narnia was based on a real Italian town now called Narni; C.S. Lewis got the idea for the place name after looking at an early 20th century atlas
0wl0L TIL that since 2006, Antarctic research stations representing countries all over the world have participated in their own film festival. Each station has 48 hours to produce a 5-minute film that includes 5 different elements: a sound, an object, a quote, a celebrity, and an action.
e0Vdg TIL that Schlitz was the number one beer in America in the early 1950s and then they started changing ingredients to cut costs. By 1975, consumers complained that the beer was forming "snot" in the can, and by 1981 the company folded.
W7Ned TIL Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word Al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", because it originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians