› added 5 years ago

119

TIL that Baby Oil is not made from babies but rather mostly from mineral oil or vegetable oil

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via reddit.com

4kd46 TIL about the drafting tool known as a "french curve", which can let a person draw smooth curves of basically any desired curvature depending on the scale. It's a tool where you don't need any complicated measurements, and has a very large amount of uses from architecture to fashion!
kO9dg TIL the story of Eric Betzig, who conceived the idea for the world's first super-resolution microscope while unemployed after quitting his job at Bell Labs due to being frustrated with the scientific community. He built this microscope in his friend's lounge room, and went on to win the Nobel prize.
9667 TIL that the architect who designed Washington DC walked away in anger and took the plans with him but a man named Benjamin Banneker, who had glanced at them, reproduced his designs from memory and that’s the Washington DC we have today.
5YZ9Q TIL that there is a star called "UY Scuti" with a diameter 1,700 times larger than that of the Sun's. It's so big that if placed at the center of our solar system its surface would reach past the the orbit of Jupiter and it would take a commercial airliner over 1,000 years to fly around it.
N7e16 TIL that Hawaii is not protected by NATO. An attack on any of the 49 other states would have to be considered by each NATO member as an attack on their own territory, but not Hawaii.