› added 3 years ago

148

TIL in 1802, Timothy Dexter wrote ‘A Pickle for the Knowing Ones’ that had 8,847 words without punctuation or capitalization. In the second edition, he responded to grammatical complaints by adding an extra 11 pages of punctuation instructing that readers could insert them wherever needed.

Y8J7 TIL Seth Green based Chris Griffin’s voice on the voice of serial killer Buffalo Bill from “The Silence of the Lambs,” specifically how Buffalo Bill would sound speaking through a PA system at a McDonalds.
nWyZ9 TIL about GJ 1214 b, an exoplanet that orbits a star about 48 light-years from our Sun. GJ 1214 b is the most likely known candidate for being an ocean planet or "waterworld." Due to varying pressures, ocean planet models feature steam, liquid, superfluid, high-pressure ice, and plasma-phase water.
W7LrN TIL that the geologist Michel Siffre spent 2 months underground without time cues to study how his body clock adapted, repeated the experiment for even longer on himself and more subjects, and discovered that their bodies tended to switch to a 48-hour clock. In one case, one even slept 34 hours.
6OQW TIL A U.S. FDA study showed 90% of more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter, “were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.” The U.S. military saved $260 million in five years by not discarding expired drugs.
XEYn8 TIL Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s wife kept hanging up on his phone calls from the ISS thinking he was a telemarketer. The 3 second delay made her think no one was on the other side of the line when she’d answer. NASA then gave her the ISS’s phone number so her phone read “SPACE” each time he called.