› added 3 months ago

13

TIL that the Mechanical Turk was an unbeatable chess machine, supposedly. It travelled the world and beat everyone. A century later, the son of the owner confessed that the Turk was really just a chessmaster hidden inside a box.

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J1J78 TIL: Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, had a pet raccoon named Rebecca who freely roamed the White House.
4Xnxw TIL that 90% of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from Asia & Africa
wL4vJ TIL: Mistaken for an April Fool's Day joke when declassified in 2004 was a British military program for a nuclear weapon codenamed Brown Bunny. (It was renamed Blue Bunny --then Blue Peacock.) To keep the electronics warm if winter-deployed, a proposal called for using body heat from live chickens.
wED1 TIL King Zog of Albania survived 55 assasination attempts
LQMem TIL the Manchineel Tree, is one of the most toxic trees in the world. Contact with its sap can cause blisters, and damage paint on cars. Ingestion of the fruit can cause severe gastroenteritis with bleeding, shock, bacterial superinfection, and compromise airways due to edema.