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TIL: In 1870, the voters of the Dominican Republic voted to become part of the United States. 99% of voters supported the measure, but when the annexation was brought before the U.S. Senate, the vote was split 28/28 and the measure failed.

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4kgeb TIL that Portland cement's name is derived from its similarity to Portland stone, a type of building stone quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England
pY0WG TIL that programming used to be considered as menial, unskilled work for underpaid women, and the term "computer" referred to those women who made punch card code to compute long and tedious mathematical calculations (or just did it by hand).
xVoK1 TIL that Buddhist monks are banned from reincarnating without government permission in China.
RjY8 TIL that in 1958 the US government funded a experiment to try to get dolphins to talk with humans by having a human and dolphin live together. When the dolphin went through adolescence he tried courting the woman, and she began to give him hand jobs, which made him more receptive to the lessons.
JW4m TIL There is a fictitious member of the German parliament. He has his own official bio page, and even a bridge named after him. The hoax has been going since the 1970s