› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Neem oil is a common pesticide that works by interrupting the reproductive cycle of insects when ingested. It affects the hormonal system of the insect, causing it to forget to eat and stop molting, mating, and laying eggs. And is 100% non toxic to humans.

n0wY TIL on April Fools Day 1976, English astronomer Patrick Moore stated to radio listeners that due to “a conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto” gravity would noticeably decrease on Earth. Shortly after, the BBC received hundreds of calls from people reporting they had felt the decrease in gravity.
edj4 TIL that Ottoman Sultan Murad IV banned coffee, tobacco & alcohol, making consumption a capital offence. He would patrol the streets himself, personally killing offenders. Murad was a habitual drinker himself & died of cirrhosis.
5Y0B9 TIL Carleton Gajdusek, who first described the prion disease kuru, had the rare distinction of being a Nobel prizewinner and a convicted child molester. As a medical researcher he studied kuru, an incurable disease that affects the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea, and published 150 papers
KYkNJ TIL a 1993 study in the British Medical Journal found that in Bristol, unemployment rates and psychiatric hospital admission rates for people under 65 were very strongly correlated, with unemployment rates explaining over 90% of the variation
YOKx TIL a company that sells tv antennas sent Comcast a cake to congratulate them on being named worst company in America