› added 10 years ago

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TIL Alan Turing, the father of the computer, ran a 2.46 marathon, only 11 minutes slower than that year’s olympic gold medal time

Read more www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk

via reddit.com

9kB7 TIL: Swear words are processed in a separate part of the brain from regular speech (and they actually reduce pain!)
kR61 TIL of Luigi Cadorna, Italian WWI general. Infamously inept, he sent 300k troops to die in the Alps, randomly executing his own soldiers to motivate them.
b990p TIL "People forget 90% of what they read". Then I learned this traces back to Edgar Dale who published a 'Cone of Experience' in 1949 as an idea, NO %s given. In 1967 someone at Mobil Oil tacked on the numbers that are mis-cited today. I learned this yesterday also, forgive the repost.
b9LlE TIL the American voice of Solid Snake also co-wrote the movies X-MEN, X2 and WATCHMEN.
W0rd TIL that in 2006, Fiji water ran an ad saying “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland”. Cleveland took offense to that and ran some tests - turns out Cleveland’s tap water is better than Fiji’s bottled water.