Post * 7eab — Curious Curator

› added 12 years ago

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TIL a Berkeley student named George Dantzig once mistook two unproved theorems that his professor wrote on the chalkboard as a homework assignment and ended up solving both within a few days

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b9Lj7 TIL Cat mummies were so plentiful in Egypt that, in the 1800s, an English company bought a load of 180,000, pulverized them and spread them on farm fields as fertilizer. Also so many baboons and ibises were mummified for the trade it likely drove them to extinction in Egypt.

4Xwk5 TIL Bell Peppers contain more Vitamin C than oranges do, and contain higher amounts the riper the color becomes. A cup of chopped Red bell pepper "contains nearly three times more Vitamin C than an orange—190 mg."

mEKx TIL according to BP at today’s production levels there are 53.3 years’ worth of oil left in the earth.

GAxWJ TIL that Zeno of Elea, a Greek philosopher famous for the paradoxes he established, was killed when even after being tortured he refused to divulge the names of his co-conspirators in a plot to overthrow a vicious tyrant

N74oP TIL that Frederick Forsyth's novel, The Dogs of War, is considered a textbook for mercenaries. His novel, Day of the Jackal, is considered a guide for assassins.