› added 13 years ago

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TIL the Olympic flame in 1976 traveled by radio waves to a laser that lit the cauldron.

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dVv7 TIL Dying is illegal in Longyearbyen, Norway because the town’s small graveyard stopped accepting bodies after discovering the permafrost prevented the bodies from decomposing.
mWmy TIL Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane was booked on the first plane that hit the World Trade Centre on 9/11 but missed the flight by 10 minutes because his travel agent wrote the wrong time on his itinerary.
e0Nkg TIL if you climb to the altitude of 408 km from Earth, a person’s weight would be around 90% of what it would be on the ground. The ISS astronauts’ weightlessness is not because “space has no gravity”. Their weightlessness is due to them being in a free fall, constantly accelerating towards Earth.
LQWdQ TIL a lion’s mane color is directly related to levels of testosterone and survivability with darker manes actually being better. So, Scar was probably way stronger than Mufasa.
m1aeY TIL that when the United States entered WWII, men 21-36 were eligible to be drafted, but 50% of those conscripted were rejected for health or illiteracy reasons. To expand the available pool of draftees, Congress lowered the minimum age to 18, where it still stands today