› added 2 months ago

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TIL about Ridge A, a spot in Antarctica that is 3x better for viewing into space than any other location on Earth. Researchers descibe the spot as 'so calm there's almost no wind or weather at all' and all wind from Antarctica appears to originate here. It is currently claimed by Australia

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p8dJQ TIL Chinese goverment banned Taylor Swift's merchandise during her 1989 tour, because the reference to that year conjured images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. Also, Swift's initials. T. S., printed on some of her merch, happen to be initials for Tiananmen Square
9YAGm TIL Chris Pratt stole his Star-Lord jacket from the set of the first Guardians of the Galaxy so he could dress up as the character and visit sick kids in the hospital.
x4G1 TIL: in 2010 a man had live explosives on his bag for three days unknowingly, when he got a phone call and a bomb squad showed up at his home. The explosives were placed and forgotten on his bag during an airport security exercise.
kO5Od TIL that the cartoon/comic strip staples of censoring swear words with *!?#& symbols (grawlixes), using starbursts or circles above a character's head to denote drunkenness (squeans), and wavy rising lines to indicate steam or heat (indotherms) were all invented by one cartoonist: Mort Walker
epdE6 TIL The world's first Tokamak fusion reactor will start producing deuterium and tritium plasmas in the 2030s, and just the initial experimental trials will consume the totality of the world's tritium supply, most of which comes from Canada, or Canadian-designed CANDU reactors abroad.