Post * 69Pym — Curious Curator

› added 1 year ago

44

TIL the Westinghouse Electric Corporation built the first industrial Van de Graaff generator. It was called the Atom Smasher, and looked like a light bulb. It was instrumental in the development of practical nuclear science.

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yQZ5p TIL that pounds are abbreviated to "lbs" because it is derived from the ancient Roman unit of measure "libra pondo", meaning "a pound by weight". "Pounds" came from the "pondo" part while "lbs" is an abbreviation of the "libra" part.

p86BO TIL that the military version of TL;DR is BLUF (bottom line up front)

LYZQ TIL shortly after returning from the moon and leaving NASA, Buzz Aldrin had a failed career as an Air Force test pilot, started drinking, had an affair, suffered depression, got divorced, got re-married, got divorced again, and became a Cadillac salesman where he failed to sell a car for 6 months.

N70jN TIL the saying "cats out of the bag" comes from when in medieval times, they would sell pigs in bags. Sometimes a seller would put a cat in the bag instead of a pig to trick the buyer. When the buyer opened up the bag, the cat would scurry out of the bag, as in the secret is out.

08bv TIL plants draw their carbon from the air, not the ground, meaning that after you die, even if you were buried in an urn full of tree seeds, most of you would never actually become a tree.