› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the Starship Enterprise uses barcode scanners as controls.

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M7mYB TIL the Easter Rising leader was imprisoned in Lincoln Prison, where he became an altar boy to steal the chaplain's key and make a wax mold. He sent its shape by postcard. Friends made the key, hid it in fruitcake and sent it. 3 tries later, he escaped in 1919. He went on to be President of Ireland.
R5bN1 TIL the Splitfin Flashlight Fish have organs near their eyes that contain bioluminescent bacteria that emit light.
gr1m8 TIL humans have smaller jaws and bigger brains than our primate forebears because of a mutation in the MYH16 gene. The jaw muscles are made smaller and weaker as a result of the gene mutation, which lessens the force applied to the skull, which can expand, letting the brain grow bigger.
j6G4p TIL about the English village of Eyam. During the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665-6, the inhabitants of Eyam quarantined themselves, in a famous act of self-sacrifice, to prevent the spread of the plague.
MeJ7V TIL of Kazimierz Piechowski, a Holocaust Survivor, who, along with three other Polish inmates under the age of 21, successfully escaped Auschwitz by stealing a commandant's car, driving to the entrance posing in stolen Nazi uniforms, and demanding the guards to open the gate.