› added 6 years ago

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TIL there is no such thing as a 'triangle player' in an orchestra. The person playing the triangle is called a percussionist and masters at least 35 different instruments.

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GYmeG TIL about the largest Empires. Spain was the first global empire. The British was the largest ( 22% of the earth's land-mass). Mongol's was the largest contiguous and Portugal's is the longest-lived modern European colonial empires.
KY9A9 TIL about vanity height: very tall buildings often include a substantial amount of unusable space purely to make the building taller. For example, 29% of the Burj Khalifa's 829 meter height (224m) is vanity - it is still the tallest building by top floor height, but only by two meters.
b9orQ TIL Surplus jet engines were used to de-ice railroads in Russia
7ryGx TIL about the Sunland Baobab, a tree so big it had a pub installed in it in 1993.
b6WVQ TIL That author Jane Austen's brother Francis fought in and commanded over numerous naval battles, was knighted, and eventually promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.