Commented

TIL Star Trek’s (1966) theme song originally had lyrics written by Gene Roddenberry, who wrote them solely to usurp half of the royalties from composer Alexander Courage. The lyrics never aired. (www.snopes.com)

And they were comically bad:...

TIL about Hector the Convector a thunderstorm and cloud system that forms nearly every afternoon from September to March in the Northern Territory of Australia (en.wikipedia.org)

Named by pilots during the Second World War, the recurring position of the thunderstorm made it a navigational beacon for pilots and mariners in the region. A mesoscale phenomenon, Hector is caused primarily by a collision of several sea breeze boundaries across the Tiwi Islands and is known for its consistency and intensity....

TIL about Lloydminster, a Canadian town that lies within two provinces but is a single municipality (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL that Chironomia is the art of using gesticulations or hand gestures to good effect in traditional rhetoric or oratory. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL this Fun Fact: Unfortunately, Chainsaws Were Invented for Childbirth (www.pharmacytimes.com)

So… yep.

TIL about Thomas Midgley and I wonder what's 'perfectly safe' today. (www.cnn.com)

TIL That the Christian SNES Game 'Super Noah's Ark 3D' Started Out as a Video Game Adaptation of 'Hellraiser' and Used the Wolfenstein 3D Engine (dubvee.org)

Of all the random Wikipedia articles I stumble upon, this one definitely had me saying, “wait, what?” more than once....

TIL the original Star Wars trilogy was influenced by the Vietnam War (www.cbr.com)

TIL fairy dust was added to Peter Pan so that children wouldn't hurt themselves trying to fly when they got home from seeing the play. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL your skin health can actually impact your overall health including heart and neurological conditions (www.bbc.com)

As the largest organ in the body, the skin can have a profound impact. The chemicals released by diseased and dysfunctional skin soon enter the bloodstream, where they wash around, damaging other tissues. Amid the ensuing systemic inflammation, chemicals from the skin can reach and harm organs that seem entirely unrelated,...

TIL The term keystone species refers to species that define an entire ecosystem, where it would be dramatically different or cease to exist without the species. Examples: beavers, wolves, and sea otte (education.nationalgeographic.org)

A keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether....

TIL that dragonflies live 80% of their life underwater as larvae. (byjus.com)

The Larva: It is interesting to note that even though we’ve seen dragonflies mostly flying around us during hot summer months, they spend most of their life underwater as a larva. They can live underwater for as long as two years, and this is considered to be the longest stage in the life cycle of a dragonfly....

TIL: How The IMF and World Bank Debt Trap Countries and Force them into Austerity (medium.com)

TIL: Gamergate's have interesting hierarchy and can replace the queen (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL: After the 1963 March on Washington, the FBI singled out Martin Luther King Jr. as a major COINTELPRO target (medium.com)

TIL that 'Rocky' (1976) was inspired by the true story of Chuck Wepner, a local boxer from New Jersey who was set up for a dream fight with Muhammad Ali. Wepner quit his job to train full time. (www.biography.com)

cross-posted from: lemmit.online/post/2699121...

TIL There's a 1.7 Billion Year Old Naturally Occuring Fission Reactor in Africa (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL that operating system Linux is an example of anarcho-communism (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL: Wikipedia.org has over 6.7 million English articles, and close to 60 million total wiki pages (en.wikipedia.org)

Today I learned about the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (en.m.wikipedia.org)

This is a “”“school”“” that makes “pray away the gay” camps look like lovely vacation experiences. They primarily cater to families with neurodivergent kids under the guise of helping them learn how to function in a neurotypical society. They use methods like GEDs to administer electric shocks when students...

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