› added 5 years ago

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TIL mythological smith gods, such as Hephaestus, Weyland, Svarog, Ptah, etc., are often depicted as crippled or deformed. This is now believed to be from constant exposure to arsenic, which was added to copper to make bronze.

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edbD TIL that the Goiânia accident, “one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters” according to TIME, occurred when thieves stole a radiation capsule from an abandoned hospital because the guard took the day off to see ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’ with his family.
kOeMe TIL scientists proposed a “Minimal Turing Test” where you get to use only one word to convince others you are human, and not a machine. The single word that people found most likely to distinguish a human from a machine based on a new study was the word “poop”.
OmKg TIL 40% of Americans believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and 25% of them don’t know the Earth revolves around the Sun
mxevR TIL of Alexander of Abonoteichus, a roman era cult leader who made people believe a sock-puppet was a snake-god. He was so influential even the emperor joined his cult, and the few sceptics who opposed him were christians, epicureans and writer Lucian of Samosata, who tried to expose him as a fraud
ByNy TIL that cochlear implants, rather than amplifying sound like a conventional hearing aid, actually converts sound into an electrical signal and transmits that signal directly to the auditory nerves!