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187

TIL that Steve Irwin’s last words were “Don’t worry, they usually don’t swim backwards”

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OGPM1 TIL Konstanti Tsiolkovsky, one of the fathers of space exploration, was designing ideas for a tubular space station in 1896 that would go on to resemble the Salyut stations 75 years in the future.
0dXOA TIL The name Marathon comes from the legend of Philippides. A Greek messenger ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens without stopping, before collapsing and dying. He ran 26.2 miles, which determines the length of a marathon today
wLOG6 TIL that when hooked up to a brain scanner, expert level meditators are in a constant gamma wave brain state. Most people only experience a few moments of gamma brain waves at times of great joy or accomplishment. When meditating on compassion their gamma levels jump 700-800%.
NvOb TIL that there were so many sea turtles in the Caribbean Sea when Christopher Columbus arrived that his crew was kept awake at night by the sound of the turtles banging against the hulls of the ships.
77AO TIL A Mars mission would expose astronauts to radiation levels equivalent to receiving a whole-body CT scan every five or six days and increase their risk of cancer by 5.5%; NASA scientists consider this the “elephant in the room” with regard to any deep space missions