› added 11 years ago

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TIL that William McAdoo’s decision to close the NYSE for 4 months in 1914 to prevent Europeans from selling American securities and exchanging proceeds for USD, and then gold, led to a decisive shift in the global balance of economic power, from Europe to the USA

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RrG7 TIL that after a girl in his community was killed by a red-light runner, a 74 year old Chinese man spent an entire day hurling bricks at bad drivers. With his neighborhood cheering him on, he smashed over 30 red-light runners’ cars before the police asked him to stop.
X01WD TIL of Alfred Redl, an Austrian counterintelligence officer who spent about ten years up to 1913 sending major military secrets to Russia, including Austria's plan for invading Serbia, which Russia then handed to Serbia.
ae59 TIL that to show how Classical Chinese had become an impractical language, linguist Chao Yuen Ren wrote a 92-character poem in which every syllable has the sound “shi”. The poem “Shī Shì shí shī shǐ” translates to “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den”.
4XLKw TIL that there are 'Atheist Churches' for secular humanists, freethinkers, skeptics, atheists and agnostics who want a sense of community without having to deal with any of the God stuff
neaZG TIL that retired astronaut, Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper, accidentally lost a bag of tools during a spacewalk in 2008. The tools, valued at $100,000, were lost when she accidentally pushed aside the bag they were in and it floated away.