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TIL Since October 31st, 2000, there has always been at least one human being in space at all times. That is 8,199 continuous days and counting.

Read more space.com

via reddit.com

R7kpa TIL that Halsey Taylor came up with his improved fountain after his fellow employees started contracting dysentery from contaminated water. Taylor created a fountain where water came out in an arc allowing people to drink water from several inches away drastically reducing the spread of illness.
JYrWm TIL about Hasekura Tsunenaga, a samurai who dazzled the king of Spain, set up diplomatic links with 17th-century Europe and even met the pope.
b8pj TIL that the earliest flush toilets were used by the people of the Indus Valley Civilization (existing from approx. 3300 BC - 1700 BC). Almost every home in the ancient cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa had a flush toilet connected to a common sewage system.
Oo8kX One night in 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove for 14 miles from his house to his in-laws. He then broke in and made his way upstairs, bludgeoning his mother-in-law with a crowbar that he’d gotten from the boot of his car before stabbing her repeatedly to death. He then proceeded to choke and stab his father-in-law, who miraculously survived. Parks then drove himself to the police station and turned himself in. It sounds like a fairly cut and dry murder case, but after going to trial, Kenneth Parks walked free. Thanks to a combination of a lack of motive, his consistent version of events, and data gathered from EEG readings, no charges were pressed against him because all evidence pointed to the unlikely and bewildering truth that Parks had been sleepwalking. It remains one of the most remarkable cases of homicidal sleepwalking in history.
ADXNd TIL The actor who portrays the elder brother Reese in Malcolm in the Middle (Justin Berfield) is actually younger than the actor who portrayed the “middle” child, Malcolm (Frankie Muniz).