› added 5 years ago

90

TIL that in WWII, an Australian soldier removed his own appendix in the middle of a Philippine jungle in 1944, without any anaesthetic and with only the use of a mirror and an ordinary knife. The operation took 4 and a half hours and he stitched himself up with jungle fibre.

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via reddit.com

v1x5K TIL that physicist Wallace Sabine was assigned the impossible task of fixing the sound quality of a poorly designed lecture hall. Despite having no background in acoustics, he discovered a relationship between chamber size, absorption surface and sound quality. Thus founding the field of acoustics.
v95r TIL that in 6BC the Greeks dug a tunnel over 1,000m long through a mountain by digging from both ends and meeting in the middle. Ingenious surveying and geometrical techniques were used to ensure the two tunnels didn’t miss.
QJK16 TIL In 2009 Sunagor launched what they claim to be the world's most powerful commercially available binoculars, going up to 160x magnification with a diameter of 70mm objectives
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