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Hong Kong-based students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li designed a door handle that uses light to always keep itself sterilized. The students were inspired by the SARS outbreak in the 2000s and figured that a self-sanitizing door handle is more effective than the chemical-based cleaning processes we are using right now. The handle is made of a glass tube with aluminum caps at each end and the entire handle is covered in a powdered photocatalytic coating made from a mineral called titanium dioxide. The bacteria is decomposed through a chemical reaction that is activated by UV light reacting with the thin coating on the glass tube.

XE9eE TIL On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2017, children’s author J K Rowling was voted the most inspirational businesswoman in a survey of UK freelancers
M7Nx0 TIL a volcano caused the creation of Frankenstein. Indonesia's Mt. Tambora erupted in 1815, and the next summer was Europe's coldest on record. Shelley, Byron, & friends were on vacation but had to stay inside, so they came up with scary stories, such as "Frankenstein", and the modern vampire.
R7Now TIL Dexter Holland, lead singer of punk band The Offspring, was a doctoral candidate for a PhD in molecular biology, but left before graduating as his music career was blossoming. He eventually returned to the University of Southern California to finish his degree, which he was awarded in May 2017.
0d1Pj TIL that there was actually one astronaut, named Abdul Ahad Momand, who came from Afghanistan, and who spent time at the Mir Space Station in 1988. [However, later on he emigrated to Stuttgart, Germany, and became an accountant.]
eXX4 TIL Keanu Reeves got the role for Neo in The Matrix because Will Smith turned it down in order or shoot Wild Wild West