› added 11 years ago

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TIL an Indian rationalist was accused of blasphemy and had to flee the country after he proved that the “miracle” tears coming from a Jesus statue actually came from clogged drainage pipes.

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e0xrL TIL in 1916, German spies blew up a munitions depot at Black Tom Island in New Jersey, killing five people. The explosion was registered at 5.5 on the Richter scale—30 times more powerful than the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11. So loud that it shook buildings in five states as far as Maryland.
XKKQ TIL that a new radio telescope being built in Australia and South Africa will generate so much data about space that it will exceed global internet traffic by a large margin. An exabyte per day of raw data, which could be compressed to around 10 petabytes.
lok9N TIL: Spirit Halloween stores are owned by Spencer's since 1999.
LkJLv TIL despite the director of Downfall enjoying the Internet memes and parodies of his film, producers initiated a removal of parody videos in 2010. This prompted more posting of parody videos of Hitler complaining that the parodies were being taken down, and a resurgence of the videos online.
rNYa4 TIL A dead body left on Mars would dry out and mummify better than Egyptian mummies. The first few stages — algor mortis (body cools), livor mortis (blood pools), and rigor mortis (muscles stiffen) — would still take place. But there would be no other overt signs of decomposition.