› added 3 years ago

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TIL Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was influenced to pursue her career in law after watching 12 Angry Men, noting juror 11's reverence for the justice system. When she was a lower court judge she would tell jurors not to follow the film's example because it was based on speculation, not fact.

88QL TIL that a 15 year-old boy stole one of those giant Caterpillar Earth movers and took off on a 12 mile joyride all the way across Tucson, knocking down power poles and running red lights at 30+mph. Police were basically unable to stop him until he hit a dead end and they shot him.
69e5J TIL about The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance patrolling, and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness of northern and eastern Greenland.
mxpXM TIL that during the Great Leap Forward, when Chinese sparrows were deemed a pest and tried to be exterminated, some of the sparrows found refuge at the Polish Embassy in Beijing. The Embassy refused to scare away the birds and was surrounded by people playing on drums causing the sparrows to die.
vPRBr TIL that the Spanish basketball team that won the 2000 special olympics were faking their disability
b7Aa TIL that naked mole rats are practically superheroes - they don’t get cancer, their noses and mouths are unaffected by acid, they live 6x longer than other rodents, they hardly age, they can survive long periods of oxygen deprivation and can live in areas with severe heavy metal pollution.