› added 9 years ago

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TIL that a woman fell to her death BASE jumping from Yosemite’s El Capitan as part of a protest intended to prove the safety of BASE jumping. Her husband filmed the fall from the meadow below.

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69mEW TIL James A Garfield's medical treatment after his (then) attempted assassination went horribly, because of the lack of sterile techniques and infection control which ultimately led to his death from infections. The assassin later said, "Yes, I shot the President, but his physicians killed him.”
MDDW TIL that it is called a “shift” key because on typerwritters uppercase letters were typed by holding down a key that would literally shift the carriage so that a different part of the type bar—the part on which an uppercase letter was printed—would hit the ribbon.
wLwdY TIL Idaho got its name because some guy George M. Willing proposed the name to Congress, claiming that it was Shoshone Indian for “Gem of the Mountain,” when it was really just a word he made up.
X0wjX TIL that during the 70s and 80s, dozens of fires were set off deliberately in Hoboken, which displaced thousands of mostly Hispanic residents and killed 56. Investigators suspected that they were started by landlords in arson for profit schemes in order to sell newly renovated apartments to yuppies.
6oPZ TIL that owls have serrations on the edge of their flight feathers, allowing an owl’s flight to be practically silent. Some fish-eating owls, for which silence has no evolutionary advantage, lack this adaptation.