TIL In the 1800s, individuals secured government jobs through connections to presidents, not by merit. This practice ended after a disgruntled job-seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, (www.americanhistorycentral.com)
TIL TIL: LaserDiscs were first marketed and sold in 1978 — and they were originally called DiscoVision! (en.wikipedia.org)
The colour of the Sun is white (www.wtamu.edu)
The sun is not yellow or orange as we see in books and movies. It emits all the colours in the visible spectrum (also in other spectrums as well) making it white!
TIL about the Gell-Mann amnesia effect; when experts find articles published within their field to be full of errors, but trust articles about other fields in the same publication (en.m.wikipedia.org)
TIL Hunter S. Thomson got an early honorable discharge from the air force in part because, "Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members." (en.wikipedia.org)
From Wikipedia: In 1958, while he was an airman first class, his commanding officer recommended him for an early honorable discharge. “In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy,” chief of information services Colonel William S. Evans wrote to the Eglin personnel office. “Sometimes his rebel...
TIL The term "joystick" does not originate from video games, and was first coined in 1909 (en.m.wikipedia.org)
The origin of the term is contested, but may be derived from “George Stick”, named for a possible inventor....
TIL that salt rock, the stuff used during winter, helped contribute to the Flint Water Crisis (www.theverge.com)
Road salt on the city’s bridges raised the river’s chlorine levels, making the water more corrosive. This has continued into the present and may have been one reason poorly-treated Flint River water was so damaging to metal pipes....
TIL Columbus never set foot in North America; he only explored the Caribbean and parts of Central and South America. (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL that in Sparta, after the wedding, brides would have their hair cut short and be dressed in men's clothing so that they would appear less threatening to their groom during the wedding night. (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL Yuri Gagarin returned to Earth during his historic first manned spaceflight by ejecting 6 km from the ground and parachuting down by himself. (airandspace.si.edu)
TIL why YouTube buffers when my network is fine. Set network to prefer IPv4 or disable IPv6 (learn.microsoft.com)
I have 2ms ping to YouTube and my network is wired 1gbit so it was odd to get so many buffering issues. So i did a search and this solution immediately solved the buffering issue! Prefer IPv4 or disable IPv6 and it’s buttery smooth
TIL about Vertical Series, insane soap operas streamed in chunks of ~90 seconds in a vertical video format. They are all silly, terrible and some possibly written by AI. It is becoming a huge success. (www.rollingstone.com)
“Guys, please watch this insane ad I got on TikTok,” the caption of a viral thread on X (formerly Twitter) read last month. The thread, which has more than 20 million views, contains clips from a film titled Forbidden Desires: Alpha’s Love, about a college professor named Adrian who falls in love with his student, who also...
TIL "npm" officially stands for "npm is not an acronym" (twitter.com)
Why not "NINAA"? Because then it would be an acronym.
TIL that in Victorian London mail delivery routes would go by every house 12 times a day. (www.mentalfloss.com)
TIL the Japanese words 青 (ao) and 青い (aoi) can refer to either blue or green depending on the situation. (en.wikipedia.org)
A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the Dark (www.smithsonianmag.com)
TIL about SearXNG -- search like the old days where you get relevant results instead of a page half full of weird nonsense (searx.envs.net)
TIL in 1893, the US Supreme Court held 9–0 that the tomato should be classified as a vegetable rather than a fruit in Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304, for purposes (en.wikipedia.org)
of tariffs, imports and customs. Justice Horace Gray delivered the opinion of the Court in holding that the Tariff Act of 1883 used the ordinary meaning of the words "fruit" and "vegetable", instead of the technical botanical meaning....
TIL that homeopathy isn't about placebo and people actually think there is a non placebo effect (en.wiktionary.org)
TIL that whales were saved from massacre when kerosene appeared (1860s) because, until then, whale oil was widely used as illumination fuel. (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL On average, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth — and to every other planet in the solar system (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL China now has a 3 child policy. (en.m.wikipedia.org)
Maximum, that is....
TIL ants that farm aphids influence the aphids’ genes in a similar way that we do with cows. Aphid-farming ants prefer and select for red/green polymorphism. (www.nature.com)
From the article:...
TIL that in 2006, a woman named Edith Macefield turned down a reported offer of $1 million to sell her 108-year-old farmhouse to make way for a commercial development in the Ballard neighborhood (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL that in 2006, a woman named Edith Macefield turned down a reported offer of $1 million to sell her 108-year-old farmhouse to make way for a commercial development in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Instead, the five-story project was built surrounding her house.