#factoftheday — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #factoftheday, aggregated by home.social.
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While tumbleweed is iconic in Westerns set in the Americas, the plant is originally from eastern Europe.
The tumbleweed (or ‘Russian Thistle’) didn’t arrive in North America from Europe until the 1870’s, most likely with shipments of seeds.
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In January 2004, Georgia reinstated its historical national flag, the “five cross flag”, after a hiatus of 500 years.
Following Georgia’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union it had become a symbol of national roots, historical identity and the 2003 Rose Revolution.
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Until 1752, the new year in England and Wales began on 25 March.
When, in 1752, England switched to the Gregorian calender, 11 days were skipped as 14 September followed 2 September.
To this day, the UK’s tax year starts on 6 April, 11 days after 25 March, the original new year.
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The peace symbol was first used in 1958 at a protest in London.
Designed by Gerald Holtom, it first appeared on signs at a protest held by the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and shows the letters N and D in flag semaphore.
It has since become an international peace symbol.
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The Chupa Chups logo was designed in 1969 by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
A friend of the company’s founder, Dalí rebranded the entire visual identity, from colours to typeface and the logo placement on the top of the wrapper.
The design remains largely unchanged.
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11 April 1954 is calculated to be the most uneventful day of the 20th century.
In 2010, William Tunstall-Pedoe, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, used a computer model to rank historical events by relevance.
Using millions of data points, 11 April 1954 ranked the lowest.
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The Free State of Ikaria was an independent country from July to November 1912, between the islanders expelling a Turkish garrison and it becoming part of Greece.
The island’s isolation made it a common place to exile dissidents during the Greek Civil War and the Junta rule.
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In 1888, Bertha Benz drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance car trip.
Her husband, Carl Benz, had patented the first car designed to produce its own power in January 1886.
The 100 km trip is now commemorated as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
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Construction of Cologne’s cathedral, the Kölner Dom, was started in 1248 but not completed until 1880, 632 years after it began.
The construction of the masterpiece of Gothic architecture was halted several times and not fully resumed, or funded, until 1840.
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The EU organic logo is compulsory for all pre-packaged organic food produced in the European Union.
It can only be used on products that contain at least 95% organic ingredients and are certified organic by an authorised body.
The remaining 5% requires strict conditions.
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British soap Coronation Street (“Corrie”) is the world’s longest-running TV soap opera.
Since its debut on 9 December 1960, it has aired over 11 000 episodes, portraying a working-class community in a fictional part of Greater Manchester.
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Ireland’s postal code system is unusually precise.
Where most systems group multiple addresses into a postcode, Eircode gives each address a unique code.
Many Irish addresses had no house number or name; the 2015 Eircode introduction fixed multiple issues at once.
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Arkell v. Pressdram (1971) is a famous UK legal anecdote where Private Eye magazine defeated a libel threat from James Arkell.
Private Eye responded to Arkell’s lawyer’s demand with a curt dismissal (“f*** off”), the case never went to court.
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According to legend, kissing the Blarney Stone, a limestone block built into Ireland’s Blarney Castle, endows the kisser with ‘the gift of the gab’.
The supposed gift of great eloquence has made many statesmen, actors and writers try to kiss the stone.
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An International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is a globally unique identifier for bank accounts.
Originally developed in the EU for internal use, it’s now an ISO standard used in nearly 90 countries.
Each IBAN has a country code, check digits and an account identifier.
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In 1917, the British Royal Family changed their last name from ‘Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha’ to a more English-sounding ‘Windsor’.
It was the height of WWI, anti-German sentiment was high, and King George V chose a new name based on the English town with the famous castle.
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The word quarantine comes from the Italian ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning 40 days.
In an attempt to protect 14th century Venice from the plague, ships were required to wait offshore for 40 days before being allowed to come into port.
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London’s ULEZ is the world’s largest low emission zone.
Expanded to cover 1500 square km in 2023, the Ultra Low Emission Zone charges £12.50 per entry for any car that doesn’t meet the minimum ‘Euro’ emission standards
Cars made after 2005 typically meet these standards.
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London’s Bridge of Aspiration provides the dancers of the Royal Ballet School a direct link to the Royal Opera House.
The bridge, completed in 2003, passes high over Floral Street in the busy Covent Garden area. Its remarkable design won numerous awards.
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The group photo of attendees of the 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference in Brussels features 17 people who were, or would become, Nobel Prize winners.
At the conference, 29 of the world’s most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory.
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The Chupa Chups logo was designed in 1969 by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
A friend of the company’s founder, Dalí rebranded the entire visual identity, from colours to typeface and the logo placement on the top of the wrapper.
The design remains largely unchanged.
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The short-range wireless technology Bluetooth is named after 10th-century Danish king Harald Blåtand (“bluetooth”), who brought Denmark’s tribes together into a single kingdom.
The Bluetooth logo is a rune merging the Futhark runes ᚼ and ᛒ, Harald’s initials.
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The Pyrenean ibex is the first animal to have been brought back from extinction through cloning and the only one to become extinct twice.
The last specimen died in 2000. Through cloning, a living Pyrenean ibex was born in 2003 but it died within minutes due to a birth defect.
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EN 13402 is a European standard for size labelling of clothes.
Based on actual body dimensions measured in centimetres, its aim is to make it easier for people to find fitting clothes by ensuring size consistency across brands and countries of origin.
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The world’s first national election via the Internet was held in Estonia in 2007.
Estonian citizens equipped with an electronic ID-card were able to vote for the national parliament (‘Riigikogu’) and of participating voters, 5.4% used this opportunity.
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“Silicon Saxony” is an area in eastern Germany that is home to Europe’s biggest microelectronics cluster.
Thousands of companies, from startup to multinational, in microelectronics, semiconductors and other high-tech have centered labs and factories around Dresden and Leipzig.
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11 April 1954 is calculated to be the most uneventful day of the 20th century.
In 2010, William Tunstall-Pedoe, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, used a computer model to rank historical events by relevance.
Using millions of data points, 11 April 1954 ranked the lowest.
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The Baltic Way was a peaceful political demonstration that occurred on 23 August 1989.
Two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning 675 km across the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
At the time, the countries were occupied by the Soviet Union.
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Billund Airport, Denmark’s second largest airport, started off as a private air strip for the neighbouring Lego company.
It started in 1961 as private 800 metre grass runway next to the factory for its executives.
By 1964 it was converted to a 1600 metre paved runway.
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The Free State of Fiume was an independent free state that existed from 1920 to 1924.
Starting off as autonomous Hungarian exclave in 1719, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in 1924, to which it was already connected with a corridor.
The territory currently lies in Croatia.