› added 4 years ago

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Today I learned that "Broomrape" is a real parasitic sometimes flowering plant found spread out across the world, and not whatever the hell you're thinking of.

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6EgRW TIL the language you grow up speaking determines how quickly you will learn to count. Chinese speaking children learn to count to 100 an entire year earlier than their English speaking counterparts.
nWjWr TIL in 1959 residents of Cortez, Colorado observed a UFO landing which became a local legend. Declassified files from the US military 50 years later revealed the real incident was an emergency landing of a top secret U-2 spy plane
xnkg TIL Ancient Babylonians were so serious about brewing beer that if anyone brewed a bad batch they would drown him in it as a punishment
9YalX TIL the 1996 video game "Tomb Raider" had a fan-made patch called "Nude Raider" that made Lara naked. The video game publisher got the site hosting the patch shut down. In the sequel, the developers included a secret code that would allegedly make her naked, but it in fact made Lara explode.
akjZ TIL only 23% of Crimean residents favoured joining Russia when polled in 2013 [PDF]