› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the world’s most powerful commercially available flashlight can be used to start fires.

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4kEea TIL due to a lack of access, prisoners turn to libraries to keep up with the outside world
GAZP1 TIL that the Archi language could have more than 1.5 million forms of a verb
9YRbX TIL that if the SR-71 was attacked by surface-to-air missiles, it simply flew higher, faster, and in a slightly different direction to outrun them.
wpMM TIL that a band, Vulfpeck, raised 20,000$ for a tour by streaming an album called “Sleepify” on Spotify. The album consisted of 10 tracks of nothing, for a total of 5 minutes of silence. Fans were urged to play this when they went to bed, and after 5.5 million streams the album was taken down.
ZQpD TIL that lightning can cause red, jellyfish-shaped flashes as big as 48 by 48 km to appear above thunderclouds. These are called sprites (air spirits), after their elusiveness, and are actually clusters of balls of plasma.