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TIL: "Don't mess with Texas" started as an anti litter slogan (www.youtube.com)

Seems wild that a now beloved phrase, started as a government slogan to get people to stop throwing trash on the road.

TIL Spiders might dream. New study finds evidence of REM-like movement in arachnids (boingboing.net)

TIL that player behaviors to a software bug that created a pandemic in World of Warcraft had similarities to COVID-19 in the real world (en.wikipedia.org)

… researchers noted the similarities between the game and the real-world pandemics. Both had an immediate impact on dense urban areas, which limited the effectiveness of containment procedures in stopping the spread of disease, while air travel, like fast travel, allowed infections to spread across large parts of the world...

TIL about Eugene Debs, a 1920 Socialist candidate who ran for President while jailed in Federal prison for sedition, receiving 3.4% of the vote at the time. He promised to pardon himself if elected. (en.wikipedia.org)

Eugene Debs, a Socialist leader in the early 20th century, ran for President five times. His fifth and highest vote count came in the 1920 Presidential election, in which he was running while in Federal prison for sedition. He received about 3.4% of the vote at the time (which included women for the first time since the...

TIL about Wirtz pumps. Put a hose in a vertical spiral and spin it in a body of water and it'll pump water through the hose with way more pressure than you would think. (www.youtube.com)

TIL The first air conditioner was created not for cooling a room but to prevent humidity causing swelling pages and blurry prints in a printing press (www.smithsonianmag.com)

At the turn of the 20th century, humidity threatened the reputation of Brooklyn’s Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing Company’s high-quality color printing. After two summers of extreme heat disrupted business and caused swelling pages and blurry prints, the printing company found that a nascent cooling industry...

TIL that the worst stadium disaster in history was the collapse of a wooden amphitheater in 27 AD that killed 20,000 people. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

Just came across a mention of this in the toldinstone video How Dangerous Was the Front Row of the Colosseum?.

TIL: A simple rubber glove will get pet hair out of fabrics (lemmy.world)

This works way better than you might expect.

TIL of The Business Plot of 1933, a failed attempt to overthrow FDR and install a dictator. Led by a covertly bankrolled Wall Street coalition of affluent businessmen (explorethearchive.com)

In 1933, a coalition of businessmen dissatisfied with FDR’s economic policies surreptitiously planned a coup. The failed Business Plot aimed to depose FDR and install a dictator.

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 the german chancellor takes screenshots of his tweets on X and publishes it on his website because X is now a closed system. (feddit.de)

www.bundeskanzler.de/…/twitter-bundeskanzler

TIL Soviet cosmonauts carried a shotgun on space missions (en.wikipedia.org)

It was purportedly (and probably in actuality) intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness, although allegedly was intended as a defensive weapon against in-space attacks by the US space program.

TIL BLACK SQUARE XVII is an artwork made from vitrified nuclear waste created by Taryn Simon. The piece will be put on display when deemed safe for human exposure in 3015. (aussie.zone)

👉 Garage Gallery...

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 in traditional Christian theology there are four sins "which cry out to heaven for vengeance" : murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, and defrauding a worker of his wages. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL that France and Spain are in the wrong time zone because of Nazis.

France was put on to German time when conquered by Nazi Germany....

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 After living in London for 14 years, Cillian Murphy moved back to his native Ireland in order to prevent his children from having posh English accents (www.yahoo.com)

The ‘Peaky Blinders’ star wanted his children to share their parents’ accents.

TIL of GUERRILLA MARKETING and the GREAT MOONINITE PANIC of 2007 : or How a tiny LED sign turned a city upside down. (aussie.zone)

👉 Boston.com article...

TIL There was a monument in Georgia that gives instructions in 8 languages on how to rebuild society after an apocalyptic event, while also functioning as a compass, calendar, and clock.

TIL about Moonbow: Nature's Rare and Beautiful Phenomenon Similar to Rainbow (upload.wikimedia.org)

A moonbow is a rare and stunning natural phenomenon that occurs when moonlight is refracted and reflected off water droplets in the air, creating a colorful arc of light in the night sky. Similar to a rainbow, moonbows are formed when light is dispersed into its various colors, but they are much rarer and more elusive, as they...

TIL The name "flashlight" came from the first lights that could only briefly illuminate because the batteries couldn’t hold a charge for long periods of time (blog.bulbhead.com)

David Misell, an English inventor, invented the first flashlight and patented it in 1899. It used three D batteries in a tube that was used as the handle of the device. The batteries supplied enough power to create light through an incandescent bulb....

TIL Many hotels including Hilton and Marriott collect guests’ used soaps, scrape the hair and stuff off, then melt them down to make new soaps. (www.cnn.com)

Used soap from Hilton Hotels is getting a second life.

TIL researchers recorded the brain waves of a dying person, they showed patterns similar to those occurring during memory recall. (blog.frontiersin.org)

Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation. Now, a study published to Frontiers brings new insight into a possible organizational role of the brain during...