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TIL The four suits in a deck of cards represent the four seasons and the 13 cards in each suit represent the 13 phases of the lunar cycle. This is why a deck of cards has 52 cards and a year has 52 weeks.

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168vD TIL Sichuan salt wells are 2,250 old. As demand for salt grew, deeper wells were needed. Sometimes, they hit natural gas pockets resulting in explosions. They learnt to harness it with bamboo tubes and mud. Gas was then used to cook the brine to produce salt crystals faster.
LD69 TIL right before President William McKinley was assassinated at a public reception, he had given his trademark good luck charm, a red carnation, to a 12-year old girl in the crowd.
dDRbd TIL car speedometers often become "frozen" following a heavy accident. The last reading can indicate the speed at impact, but is usually incorrect. This is not a feature - speedometers were not designed to jam after an accident.
rNBGy TIL The NIDA deliberately mislead the public for years about the dangers of mdma by promoting retracted studies that used lethal doses of methamphetamine instead.
BrJL TIL when Steve Jobs accused Bill Gates of stealing from Apple, Gates said, “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”