› added 13 years ago

715

TIL The amygdala is a part of the brain that controls fear. Remove it and you lose any sense of fear.

Read more nytimes.com

via reddit.com

WkwX4 TIL that the first buildings to surpass the pyramids in height were european cathedrals almost 4000 years later, but their towers eventually collapsed, making the pyramids again the highest structures ever built until 1874 AD.
g9VD TIL: Shakespeare is the only author with his own Dewey decimal number; it’s 822.33.
rNeAy TIL Airport noise complaints come from a small group of mostly the same individuals (page 53 of linked document)
lo6EK TIL that during the Mariner 4 Mars mission in 1964, the scientists were so eager to see the first ever close up images of another planet that they printed out the numerical data and hand colored it with crayons instead of waiting for a processed image.
7rGYM TIL a fire department dispatcher in told a caller to 'Deal with it yourself' while she was helping a young boy who was wounded from a drive-by shooting. The boy died and the dispatcher Matthew Sanchez was eventually fired, but won a lawsuit saying he was fired unfairly and won $25,000 as a result.