› added 11 years ago

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TIL Dr Anna Wilkinson spent six months training a tortoise to yawn to discover whether yawning was contagious in the species. It was not and her conclusion was “a negative result is still exciting”.

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Oomx1 TIL: For a period of time, many old Hollywood movies used asbestos to replicate the look and feel of snow. Most famously, The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas.
7roAZ TIL: An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York City made an unscheduled stop at Kansas City to offload a passenger who wouldn't stop singing Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".
j6Njv TIL that during build up to the release of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars released a poster mocking the lack of plot in Godzilla (1998)
LDjv TIL that members of the Nazi Party and KKK shot five unarmed protesters to death – in NC, in 1979, in broad daylight, while being filmed – and all were acquitted in two separate trials.
kNy4 TIL in 1962, two American geologists found that a large rock face above a Peruvian town could collapse during an earthquake. The Peruvian government ordered the two to retract their work or face prison. Eight years later, an earthquake collapsed the rock face, killing 20,000 of the town’s residents.