› added 7 months ago

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TIL: Hoovervilles were shantytowns built by the homeless during the Great Depression. They were named after President Herbert Hoover, who was in office when the Depression began.

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rPky TIL People knew that the Earth was round since the Ancient Greeks, and Columbus found difficulty getting funding because of the legitimate concern that Asia was too far away.
Oo5AR TIL that olives are essentially inedible when picked. It takes an extensive curing process for them to become edible, with no history of how an inedible fruit became such a popular fruit.
bQRE TIL Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il once claimed to have invented hamburgers
nedPb TIL Bruce Lee could deliver a blow in 5/10 of a second from a distance of one meter (and 8/10 of a second from a meter and a half). It's 1/20 of the time it takes for a person to blink. At the time the standard cameras couldn't cope with the speed of Bruce's blows. His strikes were not visible.
JYGRl TIL: Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol, as he felt that eagles represented a "bad moral character" as they steal fish from hawks and were too lazy to catch fish themselves. He stated that turkeys native to America and a "bird of courage" as opposed to a "rank coward".