› added 6 years ago

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TIL that the discovery of oil as a fuel was an environmental miracle for whales as it made hunting whales for their oil far less competitive.

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awdR0 TIL a survey of almost 7,000 people found that people felt more energetic and positive after watching cat videos. The pleasure they got from the videos was greater than the guilt of procrastinating. Dog videos work, too.
9YwPM TIL When Half-Life 2 had its source code hacked and leaked, Valve offered the hacker a job interview so the FBI could trap him into admitting his responsibility for the hack and arrest him.
oR5WY TIL a 2016 study found that teens consistently overestimated the risk behaviors of their peers. In virtually every case, jocks & popular teens did not use more substances, have more sexual partners, or break the rules any more than all the other school kids. But the perception was they did much more
MegX7 TIL about Mark DeFriest, an autistic savant who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for 'stealing' his father's tools. Able to memorise and reproduce keys by looking at them, he's been imprisoned 36 years for multiple escapes.
wLo7W TIL that the ADE 651; an inert rod of metal with a plastic hinge, was sold as a bomb detector. It was used by the militaries of Iraq, Afghanistan and more than a dozen other countries for years before anyone noticed that it did nothing at all.