› added 6 years ago

86

TIL that Richard Feynman created an assembly line of female mathematicians to simulate a computer during the Manhattan Project because the actual computers from IBM were delayed in arriving to Los Alamos. Turns out their "system" could calculate just as fast (just not round-the-clock).

Read more youtu.be

via reddit.com

KJV9 TIL during work on the Benjamin Franklin house, human remains from over 15 people were found hidden in the basement. The bones are dated to the time when Benjamin Franklin lived there. Corpse dissection was legal at the time; body snatching was not.
M7QLm TIL the US didn’t have the $15m to pay France for Louisiana, so they financed it through a banks in London. Napoleon had made the deal with the US to fund his war against Great Britain and Europe. Britain allowed this deal to go through only because they didn’t want France to have their NA territory
oO98 TIL since the 1990s, Carmel, Indiana has been replacing all signaled intersections with roundabouts. Benefits include gas savings of 24k gallons/year per roundabout; construction costs $125,000 less per intersection; injury accidents dropped by 80 percent and total accidents dropped by 40 percent.
7rgVP TIL That after winning the battle of Kleidion in 1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II took an estimated 14,000-15,000 prisoners, and punished them by sorting them into groups of a 100, then blinded 99 men in each one and left a single man in each with one eye so that he could lead the others home.
KOO8E TIL that the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has been one of the most hyperactive and damaging in the satellite era.