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TIL That a Japanese soldier was stranded on a island for 30 years, not knowing that the second world war had ended for 30 years. His commander came to the island to personally dismiss him in 1974.

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lov0G TIL Young children will often effortlessly write in perfect mirror image because they haven't yet unlearned the idea that every object in the world is the same thing regardless of its orientation. 'Mirror writing' comes easily to them. Eg; A teddy is a teddy upside down or not, but a 'p' is not 'b'.
KmO6 TIL In the Golden Age of the Arabic Empire, a sect called Muʿtazila existed. This sect, which promoted reason and rational thought, was prevalent until the rise of the orthodox Ash’ari.
oBg97 TIL That the Roman Emperor Nero, in his last moments, paced around saying "What an artist the world is losing" over and over again and was so petrified of dying, that he asked one of his companion to set an example by killing himself first.
v1wXj TIL of the ‘Mass-Observation Diarists’ who were hundreds of volunteers in the U.K. during WWII who made regular diary entries. They wrote about the intimate details of their lives as well as their thoughts and feelings about the world around them. The result was an intimate portrait of British life.
Y7JKv TIL the name of the mineral 'Xenotime' (originally 'kenotime' - meaning "vainglory" in greek) is making fun of a chemist who prematurely claimed to have found a new chemical element in the mineral