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TIL that, when coffee arrived from Arabia to Europe, it boosted the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. In the early days, the Royal Society of London used to meet in a coffee shop, not in a pub.

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5Ved8 TIL about the Goiânia accident, the worst nuclear disaster in Latin America’s history. A mysterious canister containing blue powder was found in a junkyard and passed through a family, resulting in 249 severely contaminated people and 4 deaths, one being a 6 year old girl.
a8ENN TIL There is a bar named Jack Ruby's Saloon in downtown Dallas mere blocks from The Sixth Floor Museum and Dealey Plaza (Site of JFK assassination). The history buff owner loves the fact that Ruby, who shot JFK's assassin, owned a bar and sells T-shirts that says "I took a shot at Jack Ruby's."
RZr6 TIL the Confederate Battle Flag, the modern day symbol associated with the Civil War, was never formally adopted by the Confederate congress nor flew at any state capitols. It became popular due to its use by the KKK and Southern Dixiecrats during the mid 20th century.
oKmE TIL that the “cost per GFLOPS” (the cost for a computer that would operate at one billion floating-point operations per second) in 1997 was of USD $42,000, while nowadays it is of merely $0.12.
XDWR TIL The 3.6m year old Laetoli footprints, one of the most important finds concerning Human evolution and evidence of upright bipedal walking, was discovered by Paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill when he dove into the ground during the middle of an elephant dung fight with a colleague.