› added 9 years ago

80

TIL Herbert Hoover was fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He and his wife spoke it when they wanted to foil eavesdroppers in the White House.

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yQkk8 TIL that in addition to the Percent sign (%) for 1/100, There is also a Per-mille symbol (‰) for 1/1,000 and a per-the-thousand symbol called a Bias Point (‱) for 1/10,000
neYko TIL the USSR considered Darwinian evolution a lie created by "bourgeois capitalism", and instead opted for Lamarckian evolution for political reasons. The failure of Soviet biologists to acknowledge natural selection resulted in a series of crop failures and food shortages.
69WZJ TIL that the highest temperature ever recorded in Hawaii was 100 °F (38 °C), tied with Alaska for the lowest of any US state.
8a8nK TIL that a plane carrying 6,000 pounds of pot crashed in Yosemite National Park. Climbers in Yosemite Valley heard news of the crash and sparked a miniature gold rush with up to 20 people searching the frozen crash site. Much of the weed was salvaged, smoked, or sold before park rangers caught on.
8a0Yb TIL after WW2, the Japanese researchers who experimented on humans to develop bio- and chemical weapons were given immunity by the US in exchange for their data. Victim accounts were then dismissed as communist propaganda. But, Americans found the data "amateurish" and subsequently returned it.