4X60w TIL: Norway has a global seed vault that was constructed in an abandoned Arctic coal mine to store and safeguard the world’s crops and plants from global natural or man-made disaster.
b9BME TIL Saddam Hussein commissioned a calligrapher to write a copy of the Quran using his blood as ink. The 605 page book contains roughly 27 liters of his blood and is kept in a mosque in Iraq behind 3 vault doors.
rROVx TIL Behind Lincoln's head on Mount Rushmore there's a Hall of Records with 16 porcelain plates describing the U.S.'s history. They're kept in a teak box inside a titanium vault.
XEOyX TIL the kilogram is currently defined as the mass of a platinum-iridium cylinder called the International Prototype Kilogram, which was made in 1879 and is stored in a special vault in France. There exist several dozen official replicas, also called prototypes.
ADaOg TIL after winning the gold at the 1980 Olympics, Polish vaulter Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz, in defiance of the jeering Soviet crowd, flipped "the arm", twice. The Soviets later asked that he be stripped of his medal to which the Polish government replied that it was caused by "involuntary muscle spasms".
R7n04 TIL there’s a 752 pound emerald in an LAPD vault, worth anywhere between $100 to $900 million.
xVaA0 TIL That to keep demand high across generations, Disney Studios carefully restrict the supply of some home release classics. They are locked away in the ‘vault' for 8-10 years before being released for a short unspecified time.
PYxDG TIL in 1957 Tulsa Oklahoma buried a Plymouth Belvedere to commemorate Oklahoma’s 50th anniversary. In addition, citizens entered guesses as to what Tulsa’s population would be in 2007, closets person would win the car. When the vault was opened it was filled with water and the car was ruined.
9YlOQ TIL the Anal Sampling Mechanism is a reflex which detects the contents of the rectal vault and allows for voluntary flatulation to occur without unexpected voiding of feces.
VMov4 TIL that in 2002, 339 dead bodies were found on the property of a crematorium in Georgia after the owner started leaving them around the crematorium, in storage sheds, inside vaults and boxes, and outdoors instead of cremating them.