› added 8 years ago

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TIL the easiest languages to learn for English speakers are Afrikaans, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese & Romanian. This is based on the amount of time it takes for the US Foreign Service to train their diplomats before entering service abroad.

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0d5gN TIL about the coco de mer tree, where the male tree has flowers that look like human male genitals and the seed has "the shape and size of a woman's disembodied buttocks on one side, and a woman's belly and thighs on the other side."
N7Mge TIL London Cab drivers protested Uber by bringing gridlock across central London. Bringing nearly 1000% increase to app installations and caused a stark decease in Black cabs uses hastening their decline.
RNOQ TIL PubMed, a free database available to the public containing huge amounts new science studies, papers, and research, is slowly dying due to federal budget cuts. They are currently on a stand still of posting new data due to staff limitations.
78x7p TIL Houston, TX was the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas in 1837, with a population of "about a dozen persons." However, the population had grown to 1,500 by the time the Texas Congress convened in Houston for the first time that May. The capital would move to Austin by 1839.
J16lQ TIL about the concept in mesoamerican folk religion called Nagual. It is a human being that can shapeshift into their tonal(animals that mesoamericans believe have connection to a certain person) animal counterparts.