› added 9 years ago

109

TIL bananas have more trade regulations than AK-47s

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0J5p TIL That there are plastic-eating marine bacteria that have caused the amount of plastic in the ocean to level off.
4XYOR TIL that the White House forbade female staffers and employees from wearing pants instead of skirts until the Energy Crisis of 1973, when building temperatures were lowered and pants were finally allowed.
XGQP TIL in 1962 news channel NBC paid a West Berlin team 50,000DM ($150,000 today) to dig under the Berlin Wall, on the condition that NBC could film the escape. 29 East Germans managed to escape, and the resulting NBC film, The Tunnel, won 3 Emmies.
4XJ5g TIL that in 2018, because of rising prices and bad conditions for open access articles, all German universities collectively didn't renew their contracts with Elsevier, the biggest publisher for scientific papers
XwGR TIL that gunpowder was discovered by Taoist alchemists who were searching for an elixir of immortality