› added 11 years ago

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TIL due to a Gypsy crime wave, city officials in Milan authorised police to set up an undercover operation that used hidden cameras and telephone taps to make arrests. The investigation found some children were generating up to $15,000 to $20,000 a month from their criminal activities.

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oR4er TIL the term sensory-specific satiety, which is where your body can get “full” of one specific type of food but then get a renewed appetite for another type. The concept explains why you can finish a big meal and not be hungry anymore, but then happily eat dessert.
R5bYw TIL about the CTXφ bacteriophage: a virus that lives inside the Cholera Bacteria and carries the gene that causes symptoms in cholera infection. The unusual relationship is akin to a "symbiotic parasite"
VMDmZ TIL in the 1950s an American economist (Armen A. Alchian) figured out lithium was used to fuel Hydrogen bombs just by looking at publicly-available stock prices.
18xX TIL at the start of his career, writer Kurt Vonnegut was assigned to write a column for Sports Illustrated about a racehorse that jumped the fence and ran away, after staring at the blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, “The horse jumped over the f**king fence”, and left.
NZP8 TIL that in Nikola Tesla’s elderly years he became obsessed with feeding pigeons particularly a white female one, speaking of her he said “ I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life”