b6xe7 TIL of Angus Barbieri, who fasted for 382 days in order to lose weight. He ate nothing, and had only zero calorie drinks, vitamins, electrolytes and yeast. He successfully lost the weight, and returned to normal life.
LQP0V TIL Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez not only proved the asteroid extinction of the dinosaurs, but also worked on the Manhattan Project AND flew over Hiroshima during the atomic bombing.
QNB0M TIL the Simpsons creators shelved an Itchy & Scratchy spinoff because it made test audiences physically ill
AN5Ag TIL Canada officially switched to Metric on April 1st, 1975 with some citizens thinking it was an April Fool's joke and others protesting it. The Canadian Metric Commission was officially abolished in 1985, with most Canadians now using a mix of Imperial and Metric measurements in daily life.
yVa8V TIL that after leaving office, former US President John Tyler supported the Confederacy, with him even voting for Virginia’s secession and being elected to the Confederate House of Representatives.
m1eZx TIL About a transplant of a man's middle finger as a penis (including bones), and that it was still functional a decade later
DQWBg TIL In Norway the Storting, consisting of the president and five vice presidents. The system with five vice presidents was implemented in 2009. According to current practice, political parties are represented proportionately in the Storting's Presidium.
vPk67 TIL the reason West Virginia and Virginia are split is because Virginia seceeded during the Civil War but West Virginia decided to come back to the Union
J1VO4 TIL that there is a near-perfectly circular, ultra-faint radio bubble (“Teleios”) detected in the Milky Way with no obvious optical or X-ray counterpart, and its symmetry is unusually high.
pYl4b TIL there was a successful petition to get an Australian prisoner released after his 100th birthday, only for him to say "don't be fucking silly I live here" and refuse to leave.
GA6Rj TIL that Richard Nixon is the only US president to be born on the west coast, and in any mainland state west of Texas
16E5d TIL that in African thought, a person lives on as long as they’re remembered. In Sasha and Zamani concept, the “living-dead” stay alive in memory until the last person who remembers them dies.