🎓 TIL - Today I Learned but no 🐝

TIL Britain tried to kill off the Welsh language in schools with a simple piece of wood called the Welsh Knot [source, comments]

TIL about Star Trek: Axanar, a crowdfunded Star Trek fan film which raised over 1.13 million dollars in funding. Production on the film was halted after Paramount and CBS sued them for copyright infringement and release harsher guidelines for fan films to follow. The film has never been released. [source, comments]

TIL Citibank convinced US Marines to walk into Haiti’s national bank, steal $500,000 in gold bars, and transfer it to Citibank’s New York vault [source, comments]

TIL Korean company Samsung Electronics' six manufacturing plants in Vietnam recorded a revenue of $62.5 billion and an export turnover of $54.4 billion, which accounted for approximately 13.12% of the Vietnam’s GDP and 13.4% of its total export turnover. [source, comments]

TIL that the word “canola” in canola oil is an acronym, standing for “Canadian Oil, Low in Acid” [source, comments]

TIL Paul McCartney's sheepdog Martha, subject of the Beatles' 1968 song "Martha My Dear", outlived John Lennon, passing away peacefully in 1981 at age 15 [source, comments]

TIL as of 2021, nearly half of the fire engines and pumpers operated by U.S. fire departments were at least 15 years old, the age at which NFPA guidance recommends moving them from frontline to reserve service. About 9% were at least 30 years old. [source, comments]

TIL King George III gave royal assent to An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade on March 25, 1807, which banned trading enslaved people across the British Empire. He never owned slaves and privately called parts of the trade repulsive [source, comments]

TIL that after director Victor Salva was convicted of sexually abusing 12-year-old actor Nathan Forrest Winters, Francis Ford Coppola, Salva’s mentor and financier of the film Winters was in, reportedly told Winters he’d never work in film again and later tried to sue him for breach of contract. [source, comments]

TIL KitKats are recursive. KitKats that are broken during production are ground up and used as filling between the wafers of the next batch of KitKats. [source, comments]

TIL not only do prairie dogs have a vocal language, but it is also one of the most complex languages in the animal kingdom. One chirp can say, "A tall human in a blue shirt is approaching quickly from the north." They can actually tell the difference between colors and speeds! [source, comments]

TIL that garlic bread was invented by Italian immigrants in the US in the 20th century. It stems from bruschetta but olive oil was hard to find back then, so butter was used instead. [source, comments]

TIL that in the 1770s, the colony of Virginia voted multiple times to curtail the slave trade only for the bills to be vetoed by Lord Dunmore on behalf of King George III who had massive investments in the slave trade. [source, comments]

TIL that the creator of Batman acknowledged that they patterned the character after pulp mystery men such as The Shadow. The first Batman stories were also based on Shadow pulp. Lamont Cranston is a wealthy playboy bachelor turned vigilante. [source, comments]

TIL there is a copper mine in Romania extracting 9 million tonnes of ore per year, but only 0.38% is usable copper. The tailings (the residue sludge) are pumped into a nearby valley, creating a massive toxic lake that destroyed the village of Geamăna [source, comments]

TIL Tigers look orange to humans because we are trichromats, but they appear green to deer and wild boars because they are dichromats [source, comments]

TIL that on Ulysses S. Grant's post-presidential world tour, he warned the Japanese emperor not to take foreign loans lest it fall "into the abyss into which Egypt has fallen". Grant's warning made a "forceful impression" on the emperor and led to the rejection of various loan proposals. [source, comments]

TIL the 1980 Winter Olympic Village was built with the intention of converting it into a federal prison after the games ended. Multiple Olympic delegations refused to house their Olympians there. [source, comments]

TIL that President Turbay of Colombia, who was in office 1978-1982, was married to his niece, and had four children with her. [source, comments]

TIL: In the USA, more than one in four (28 percent) men under the age of 30 reported having no close social connections. [source, comments]