› added 11 years ago

81

TIL Sen. Harry Reid tried to strangle a gangster who offered him a bribe

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e0yWg TIL Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting's co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for $1
aOGo TIL the three mile limit for international waters was created as this was the maximum distance a cannon ball could travel from the shore.
LkB1V TIL that only 10% of wine 'experts' can consistently rate the wine from the same bottle in the same way, and they aren't consistent the next year. After analysing results across wine competitions in california, medals were found to be distributed at random.
kJVog TIL that the Three Gorges Dam in China has slowed the rotation of Earth and increased the total length of the Earth's day by 0.06 microseconds
E1gJP TIL A French WW1 air force squadron composed of American volunteer pilots, named the Lafayette Escadrille, had two lion cubs as their mascots named ‘Whiskey’ and ‘Soda’