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TIL that a picture of a giant robot helping Russia revolutionaries storm the winter palace in 1917, was accidentally used in an Australian history exam. Some students wasted time in trying to figure out what the giant robot was, thinking it was a statue of a Russian politician or a battleship.

Read more smh.com.au

via reddit.com

b6o4N TIL that Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod was blamed by church leaders for the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake off the coast of Colonial Massachusetts — as his "heretical rods" interfered with the "artillery of Heaven" & deprived God of using lightning as "tokens of His displeasure."
v1e54 TIL that in 1972, artist Dieter Meier installed a commemorative plaque at the railway station in Kassel, Germany, which read: "On 23 March 1994, from 3 to 4 pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque". He honored the promise 22 years later.
j69ap TIL Lake Baikal contains 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water (more than all of the North American Great Lakes combined)
9wPy6 TIL that until 2012, when they switched to a bacterial source, Roche Pharmaceuticals used up to 90% of the world's annual star anise crop to produce shikimic acid, a chemical intermediate used in the synthesis of oseltamivir (Tamiflu)
xV6K0 NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere because engineers failed to convert units from English to metric.