› added 11 years ago

62

TIL in 1953, Ronald Maddison, a 20-year old Royal Air Force engineer died while acting as a guinea pig for sarin gas testing at Porton Down, England. Maddison was offered 15 shillings for the experiment, which he planned on using to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8gZV TIL that one of the primary goals of alchemy - transmuting a base metal into a noble metal - was achieved as early as 1924 when gold was produced by neutron bombardment of mercury.
MeDA7 TIL that the ash from coal power plants contains uranium & thorium and carries 100 times more radiation into the surrounding environment than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
neQeP TIL vegetables are any part of a plant that is consumed by humans or other animals as food, which means from a botany perspective "there is no such thing as a vegetable."
koe5 TIL that people in Denmark both pay the highest taxes in the world and are the happiest people in the world, according to several surveys, have 6% unemployment and a nominal GDP that’s 25% higher than that of the United States.
vPPPR TIL that Charrúa people were the indigenous people of Uruguay and the surrounding areas. In 1831 the first president of Uruguay, Fructuoso Rivera, organized a campaign to eradicate the Charrúas. They are now considered ethnically extinct.