Post * 5VXDD — Curious Curator

› added 1 year ago

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TIL The Great auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a flightless black and white birds found around the North Atlantic. As explores went south the found birds that resembled the Great auk and named them penguins too, but they are actually unrelated.

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JY5J1 TIL that after L. Ron Hubbard's death in 1986, the Church of Scientology officially claimed that he voluntarily abandoned his physical body after it became an impediment to his work, and that he had left Earth to do scientific research on another planet—having "learned how to do it without a body".

epyXL TIL Formula one race car driver Alex Zanardi cheated near death three times. In 2001 he had both legs amputated in a racing crash,in 2020 he suffered head trauma while handcycling and was in a medically induced coma, and in 2022 his home caught fire and he was hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

4XjVX TIL of the $23 million dollar toilets designed by NASA for deep space missions. With odor control being a serious issue, NASA pays certified sniffers to smell the toilets after they've been used to evaluate odor-control measures. The lead engineer calls them the "unsung heroes of the space program".

G9E5 TIL that Teddy Roosevelt believed that American currency shouldn’t carry the motto “In God We Trust.”

9YPXG TIL that at the Hoover dam construction the first worker death was that of J. G. Tierney and the last death was that of his son Patrick Tierney which came 14 years after the death of his father