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Thomas Rot
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I like to play around with projective spaces for these type of questions. The the tangent bundles of real projective spaces have stiefel whitney class $(1+a)^{n+1}$. So for example for $n=4$, we have stiefel whitney class $1+a+a^4$. This polynomial is irreducible hence the tangent bundle does not split.

Thomas Rot
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