› added 6 months ago

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TIL when Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft had an asteroid named after him, he wrote a constitution for it's future inhabitants including articles that forbid use of imperial measurement units, outlaw the use of apostrophes, and limit the length of tax forms to one page.

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7rKdX TIL that when the ancient Marquesan people, who became Hawaiians, first sailed to Hawaii, they brought pigs, dogs, and chickens to eat. These fat, slow dogs that mainly ate fermented Taro root were called Poi dogs and were eaten and sometimes sacrificed and placed in ritual graves with children.
vP198 TIL about Daphne Oram, a medium-inspired musician who wrote the first ever real-time electronic composition at the age of 23 and later invented the Oramics Machine—an electronic instrument "played" by painting lines and marks on film.
PYOKO TIL about Ernest Shackleton, who lead a failed Antarctic mission from 1914-1916. Despite the unbelivable circumstances, Shacklton managed to rescue all members of his crew, with none of them dying despite being stranded for almost 2 years
YpAxx TIL Disney composer Alan Menken came from a family of dentists and trained at medical school. He was a poor student, "wild hippie" and barely finished NYU. 8 Oscars, 10 Grammys, 7 Golden Globes later, Menken is now a star at NYU with a doctorate and scholarship in his name
dZrj TIL only one graphic novel has ever won a Pulitzer Prize: Maus, a memoir/biography of a Holocaust survivor, featuring anthropomorphic animals