› added 7 years ago

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TIL Taco Bell has locations in 22 countries including China, Iceland and Guam but none in Mexico. They tried but failed twice to start locations there. Mexicans had trouble identifying what certain items were because of their inauthentic names. They had to rebrand the “Crunchy Taco” to a “Tacostada”

e0MkJ TIL that the concept of a "rap battle" has existed since the 5th century CE. "Flyting", was a spoken word event where poets would trade insults back and forth in poetic verse.
DQ7Vr TIL In June 2009, the government of Greenland, the Naalakkersuisut, made Greenlandic the sole official language of the autonomous territory, to strengthen it in the face of competition from the colonial language, Danish. The main variety is Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic.
J1m1k TIL that Eugene O'Neill's only child - his son Eugene O'Neill Jr - died at the age of 40 by suicide. His last words were "Never let it be said of O'Neill that he failed to empty a bottle. Ave atque vale"
p8d8A TIL that Turkey Vultures have been & sometimes are still used to detect natural gas leaks from pipelines; the odor that gas companies add to gas (so we can detect it since it's odorless) is the same as rotting flesh, which leads the vultures to congregate in the sky in the area of the leak.
9Y5g7 TIL that a Spanish town mailed dog poop back to offenders. A team of volunteers looked for careless dog owners and struck up conversations to learn the dog's name, which made it possible to identify the owner via pet records and mail back the poop, labeled "Lost Property." Violations dropped by 70%.