› added 12 years ago

86

TIL That the first Computer Programmer was a woman

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8aKEX Today I learned that the First Federal Congress of the United States met on March 4, 1789. Its first official act was to adjourn the meeting for failure to achieve a quorum. It would first achieve a quorum on April 1, 1789.
XEGeE TIL that Senator Jake Garn, who flew in the Space Shuttle in 1985, experienced the worst case of space sickness on record. Because of this, NASA jokingly uses a "Garn Scale" to measure reactions to space sickness, where "1.0 Garn" is the worst.
nnrd TIL the “Spanish Flu” was so called because during WWI the warring countries censored the news of the plague to maintain morale while neutral Spanish didn’t.
4EEo TIL that the famous photo of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue was taken at the end of his 72nd birthday celebration. A photographer tried to persuade him to smile for the camera for a last time, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead.
wolbo TIL that the Pinus radiata tree is simultaneously endangered in its natural habitat and used extensively around the world as plantation timber