› added 1 month ago

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TIL More people died from illness or cancer linked to their time near or at Ground Zero than in the direct attack on World Trade Center. Actually, more than twice the amount: 6,781 died later compared to 2,753 on 9/11.

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kOEk4 TIL that Annie Murphy (Alexis from Schitt’s Creek) almost quit her acting career after her apartment burnt to the ground and she had $3 in her bank account. A couple days later she secured her audition for Alexis.
9LRr TIL that in addition to being fluent in English, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, Thomas Jefferson also studied Arabic, Gaelic and Welsh, and remains the most multilingual President of the United States.
nkgr TIL that a woman named Rifca Stanescu became the world’s youngest grandmother at the age of 23. Rifca, from the Romanian town of Investi, was 12 years old when she gave birth to her daughter, Maria. Maria, in turn, had her first child, her son Ion, at age 11.
m1MER TIL that the brown paper bag test is a term in the African American community to discriminate against darker skinned black people by comparing their skin tone to a brown paper bag. Many were barred from having access to resources and public spaces because of it.
Yp7m7 Consider the autoclave, which scientists use to sterilize tools and which issues scalding steam to do so. Or consider the heat gun, which is used to dry glassware and to warm distillation devices. It can also ignite anything flammable that gets too close. Glass containers in a vacuum can implode, spraying shards everywhere. Centrifuge rotors can fail, causing explosions that throw shock waves throughout a lab filled with chemicals. Steel vessels built to contain liquids and gases at hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch can rupture, hurling metal at lab workers.