› added 5 years ago

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TIL that the early versions of the Easy-Bake Oven, a child's toy that allows children to bake small treats, used incandescent lightbulbs as their heat source. That's because these bulbs were so inefficient that only 5% of the electricity they used produced light. The rest produced heat.

E1MZx TIL Botswana did not even create a military for ten years after gaining independence. Cross-border incursions from Rhodesia presented an interstate threat, rare in Africa, forcing them to professionalize defense in 1977. Despite this, Botswana is Africa's oldest democracy, never experiencing a coup.
LaNZ TIL that only one person signed all four major American founding documents (the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution): Connecticut Senator Roger Sherman.
ZQpD TIL that lightning can cause red, jellyfish-shaped flashes as big as 48 by 48 km to appear above thunderclouds. These are called sprites (air spirits), after their elusiveness, and are actually clusters of balls of plasma.
KVo9 TIL during the Cold War, students at Stuyvesant High School built a particle accelerator in their school’s basement. However, when they powered it on, it “tanked the electrical system for the building and surrounding area.” > $10,000 were spent on the machine, but no one knows what happened to it.
WkWQL TIL The expression "15 minutes of fame" came from Andy Warhol, inspired by his words "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" which appeared in the program for a 1968 exhibition of his work in Stockholm, Sweden.