› added 1 year ago

37

TIL unlike other ex-British parliaments, the ruling party of Newfoundland's MPs sit to the left of the Speaker rather than the right - a tradition dating to the 1850s when the heaters were located on that side

p8O7p TIL Hitler was an avid reader, having read at least 6,000 books, and would quote Shakespeare throughout WWII. He ranked Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe as the great works of world literature.
vAdr TIL that due to their short digestive tract and massive daily diet of bamboo, Giant Pandas defecate up to 40 times a day
oBM9L TIL while a grad student, botanist Arthur Galston discovered the use of an acid to encourage the flowering of soybeans, noting that high levels had a defoliant effect. The military later developed this acid into agent orange. Galston became a bioethicist, and his objections led Nixon to ban it.
epdZE TIL about the 4x100m universal relay. It features 4 athletes with 4 different disabilities. Each team must be mixed, with 2 women and 2 men. The relay is started by a visually impaired athlete, followed by an amputee sprinter. In third place is a person with cerebral palsy, then a wheelchair athlete
9YEgX TIL of Project Stormfury. Ran by the US government in 1962, it was an attempt to weaken tropical cyclones by flying aircraft near the eye walls, and “seeding” them with silver iodide in hopes to freezing their inner structures. The project was a failure, and ended in 1983.