› added 9 years ago

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TIL that anyone can take huge container ships around the world as passengers for about $120 a day. Trips may last just a few days, although some travelers sign on for 60 days or even around-the-world journeys. Meals are provided, rooms are cleaned once a week and passengers do their own laundry.

Z84VQ TIL of an early-twentieth-century novelist named Robert Walser who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, committed to a sanatorium and largely forgotten until it was discovered that the tiny, supposedly schizophrenia-induced markings on scraps of paper were actually a novel deciphered in the 1970's
XErEE TIL that after Usain Bolt broke the 100 m world record at the 2009 Berlin World Championships, the mayor of Berlin awarded him a 12 foot long, 6000 pound piece of the Berlin Wall. Bolt accepted and it is now housed at the Jamaica Military Museum.
ZpVNG TIL that sunlight on Pluto at mid-day would be equivalent to twilight on Earth despite being 40 times farther away from the Sun than Earth, bright enough to read a book.
aL0M TIL- In 1933 America’s most senior, most decorated Marine, General Smedley Butler, told the House of Representitives that wealthy businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Roosevelt in a coup, and install a fascist government.
b69p7 TIL President Rutherford B. Hayes remembered in the US mostly for being the first president to lose the popular vote and win the electoral vote, is remembered very fondly in Paraguay for his help in settling a territorial dispute that ensured "its survival as a country"