› added 9 years ago

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TIL of Heinrich Schliemann, who survived a shipwreck as a young boy, made a small fortune off the California gold rush, cornered the market in indigo dye and ammunition constituents in Russia during the Crimean War, was fluent in 14 languages, and excavated the site presumed to be Troy.

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Raaa TIL a man in India carved a 360ft tunnel through a mountain after his wife died because medical attention could not be brought to her in time.
WpxA TIL the power-up mushroom in Super Mario Bros. and the mushroom consumed by Alice to alter her size are the same: Amanita muscaria.
GAJXJ TIL That the theoretical black dwarf star is expected to be able to live for up to 10 to the power of 32000 years, meaning that when they go supernova may make it the last transient to occur before the heat death of the universe.
LlKm TIL that a then 12-year-old girl was the sole survivor of a plane that crashed straight into the Indian Ocean. She was rescued after spending 9 hours in rough, shark-infested waters clinging to life on a piece of debris from the plane.
1O47 TIL that in the US, you are almost 2x more likely to kill yourself than you are to be killed by someone else. Furthermore, you are 74x more likely to die of heart disease or a malignant tumor than be murdered.