› added 11 years ago

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TIL the algorithm the ants use to discover how much food there is available is essentially the same as that Internet protocols use to discover how much bandwidth is available for transferring a file.

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loZoN TIL that a cancelled Hulk film was to feature him fighting a giant hummingbird and a giant beetle.
pryQ TIL the “pirate accent” is actually from Dorset, England. Robert Newton used it as Long John Silver, and it has stuck ever since.
om08 TIL that Queen Elizabeth I granted English theatre companies the right to forcibly recruit children to be performers. Shakespeare disapproved of this practice and refused to use abducted children in his plays.
N7Ld6 TIL about Xenophon Zolotas, a Greek scholar and politician, who gave two speeches in English to the IMF using nothing but Greek loanwords.
v1n8R TIL about the swiss battle tank Panzer 68: using the radio at full power would lead to erratic movements of the turret and switching on the heating system could fire the main gun