› added 4 years ago

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TIL that on Skylab, the American space station of the 1970s, only about 2.8 liters of water was used each time an astronaut took a shower.

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nNnd TIL Steve Buscemi was a New York City fire fighter from 1980 to 1984. After the events of 9/11, he showed up in NYC to volunteer, working twelve-hour shifts for a week, and digging through rubble with his old comrades looking for missing firefighters.
Y7xV7 TIL The first mention in Western medical literature of magic mushrooms was from 1799 when a man picked mushrooms off London’s Green Park for breakfast. After stewing them for his children, his son had “fits of immoderate laughter” and daughter got vertigo
d8XDZ TIL Roger Waters from Pink Floyd wrote 'Comfortably Numb' after getting sick at a show in Philadelphia and receiving a mystery shot from a doctor.
QNDBe TIL that the Chinese mile is much shorter than the standard mile used everywhere else (esp. US and UK)
m1JwY TIL some 8th century Anglo-Saxon coins contained the words "Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah" written in Arabic, alongside the name of the king in English. This was apparently a result of imitating the aesthetics of Caliphate coins, without understanding the meaning.